Mr. Philip von Schöppenthau:

I will comment briefly on whether the general public should be disturbed about what is happening. The European Cockpit Association launched an online safety petition on this issue and in a relatively short period of time we collected 100,000 signatures which we handed to the European Commission and Parliament two weeks ago. This indicates that members of the public feel concerned once they know about the issue. However, the problem is that pilot fatigue is not visible in the statistics. Fatigue often goes unreported by pilots. Only between 20% and 30% of pilots file a report when they are fatigued. Many others do not bother because they are too tired at the end of a shift or they fear negative repercussions. Several of our member associations carried out fatigue surveys among pilots, the results of which are summarised in our publication. They confirm the earlier comments about pilots falling asleep and being tired.

We have repeatedly confronted EASA with our arguments and the arguments of scientists. EASA argues that the scientists got it wrong on a number of issues and that as they do not understand the operational environment in Europe, it had to reinterpret the results and sometimes disregard them. We said that is fine but the scientists should be asked whether they agree with EASA's reinterpretation and doubts before it comes to a conclusion. EASA is aware that it disregarded scientific evidence on a variety of issue but it claims to know better. One scientist clearly stated that EASA reinterpreted and, in some cases, misunderstood the recommendations of the scientists.