Stress
There are many types of stress. Typically in the aviation environment there are two distinct types - acute and chronic. Acute stress arises from real-time demands placed on our senses, mental processing and physical body; such as dealing with an emergency, or working under time pressure with inadequate resources. Chronic stress is accumulated and results from long-term demands placed on the physiology by life’s demands, such as family relations, finances, illness, bereavement, divorce, or even winning the lottery. When we suffer stress from these persistent and long-term life events, it can mean our threshold of reaction to demands and pressure at work can be lowered. Thus at work, we may overreact inappropriately, too often and too easily.
The situation of stress arising from lack of stimulation at work has been covered above under Complacency above.
Some early visible signs of stress include changes in personality and moods, errors of judgement, lack of concentration and poor memory. Individuals may notice difficulty in sleeping and an increase in fatigue, as well as digestive problems. Longer-term signs of stress include susceptibility to infections, increased use of stimulants and self-medication, absence from work, illness and depression.
It is important to recognise the early signs of stress and to determine whether it is acute or chronic. Coping with daily demands at work can be achieved with simple breathing and relaxation techniques. However, perhaps more effective is having channels of communication readily available through which to discuss the issue and help to rationalise perceptions. It is entirely appropriate that some of these channels involve social interaction with peers. As with fatigue, sleep, diet and exercise are all important factors in helping to reduce stress and build resilience to stressors. If the stress is chronic, then definite lifestyle changes will be required; this must be achieved with support from the Company. Companies ought therefore, to have employee assistance (or wellbeing) policies that include stress reduction programmes.

The Aggravators, the role of Stress, Pressure and Fatigue in Aviation Human Factors * The role of Stress, Pressure and Fatigue in the context of the aviation industry.
The aviation industry is fraught with accidents and catastrophic events brought on by too much stress, pressure and / or fatigue within the context of the aviation industry. While the right amount of stress or pressure may produce a creative tension that is productive, there are just a few degrees of separation between these factors operating as aggravators or mitigators. Of the Dirty Dozen of Human Factors, stress, pressure and fatigue are the spoilers. They are, if you will, the aggravators of human factors. When stacked on top of other human factors like norms, distraction, complacency, communication, resources, assertiveness, awareness, teamwork or knowledge these human factors may become distorted and often irrupt into problems, mistakes, slips, lapses, accidents and catastrophe.In healthy doses stress and pressure play an important role in human performance. Healthy stress, called Eustress gives one the sense of fulfillment or other positive feelings. Healthy pressure may help to increase performance. Even the right amount of fatigue is useful as a body alarm clock letting you know it is time to take a break and recharge.What could be worse than stacking one of these aggravators on top of the human condition? The answer, stacking all three on. A human factors dog pile of sorts. All three of these aggravators may be present and stacked on top of one another making the human condition even more susceptible to performance problems. A case in point is Foxconn, one of the world’s largest electronic manufactures, producing IPad and IPhone parts for Apple. In 2010 problems with stress, pressure and fatigue became world news as 18 employees of Foxconn attempted to jump to their deaths. 14 employees died as a result. Foxconn as a cautionary tale warns us about the unseen but real human factor problems of stress, pressure and fatigue and the toll they can take on the human condition.The nature of the aggravators often makes their detection difficult. Stress can be insidious and can morph to harmful levels before we are aware there is even a problem. All of the aggravators may be cumulative. Fatigue is a good example. Miss a couple of hours sleep for a few nights or even skip sleep for a night and your body begins to feel the effects of sleep debt. Your body will only go so long until it demands payment for the debt your body has accumulated. Stress and fatigue “creep” is a real problem that often goes undetected until something or someone breaks.What about the opposite? For example “What happens when there is a lack of stress?”. Is there such a thing as not enough stress? The answer is “Yes”. Eustress increases our performance through creative tension. In this state there is a reasonable expectation or productive tension that draws us towards the goal. Like a rubber band stretched between two poles. Too much tension and the rubber band breaks. No tension results in no expectation to move forward. The Costa Concordia cruise ship accident is a good example of apathy at work. The Costa Concordia ran aground January 13, 2012. Sailing too close to the shoreline with a Captain in the lounge instead of at the helm, the cruise ship ran aground killing 32 people and injuring 157. Apathy stacked on top of a lack of situational awareness had permeated the cruise leadership leaving the passengers to fend mostly for themselves. Several passengers responded to the ship running aground by going to their muster stations for evacuation only to be told by the cruise ship director that everything was under control and the passengers were dismissed to return to their lounges.While pressure and stress sometimes escapes early detection and is difficult to measure and quantify, it is nevertheless real. Fatigue is more evident, tangible and measured by our body clock. While in certain instances the FAA regulates duty time limitations, fatigue can still be a problem. We think we can overcome sleep debt by working harder, push it back, fight it, ignore it, but eventually it catches up with us and often at the most inopportune times.
Colgan Air Flight 3407
It was a cold winter night on February the 12, 2009 when Continental flight 3407 took off from Liberty International Airport in Newark, New Jersey, on what should have been a fairly routine flight.But five miles north-west of its intended destination in Buffalo, New York, the plane stalled before plunging into a house below, killing both pilots, as well as two flight attendants, all passengers, 49 total on board and one man on the ground. The pilots had failed to properly respond to cockpit warnings that the plane was moving too slowly through the air, with Captain Martin Renslow raising the plane's nose, slowing it even further.The accident report said that ahead of the flight, both pilots had long commutes and slept in the crew lounge, instead of a hotel. The accident was investigated by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), with a final report issued on February 2nd, 2010. The NTSB determined that the accident was caused by the pilots' inability to respond properly to the stall warnings.Safety issues examined during the accident investigation process included pilot training, hiring, and fatigue problems. The board found that “the pilot’s performance and loss of situational awareness was likely impaired because of fatigue.In the hearing a Federal Aviation Administration scientist, Tom Nesthus, testified that sleepy pilots were generally unable to judge the extent of their impairment, and likely to have trouble concentrating and following multiple sources of information. In the crash, the crew lost track of their deteriorating airspeed, and when a warning system activated, Captain Renslow reacted wrongly, pulling up the nose of the Bombardier Dash 8 instead of pushing it down, to regain airspeed and improve the angle of the wings.Concerning the pilot’s rest, board investigators found that the crew lounge was, in fact, used inappropriately, and the airline recognized the problem with the practice. “It’s not quality rest,” Harry Mitchel, Colgan’s vice president for flight operations, testified. “There’s a lot of activity in our crew rooms.”A safety board member, Deborah A. P. Hersman, said that Ms. Shaw had told one FedEx pilot that there was a “couch with my name on it” in the Colgan pilot’s lounge in Newark where she would sleep.But Daniel Morgan, vice president for safety and regulatory performance at Colgan Air, said the airline had abided strictly by rules on how many hours a pilot could work in a shift, and how many hours were given between shifts, and could not control employees’ off-hours behavior. “You’re adults, you’re professionals, use the time we’ve given you to rest,” he said. Pilots could share apartments near the base, he said.Both pilots can be heard yawning on the cockpit voice recorder.NTSB’s Chairman Deborah Hersman made it clear she considered fatigue a contributing factor noting that for the past 20 years that fatigue has remained on the NTSB's Most Wanted List of Transportation Safety Improvements.The aviation workplace environment, whether it is the aircraft, a hangar or flight line has enough complexity as it is. Add in the human factors of stress, pressure and fatigue and the complexity goes up and the chance of a mistake, slip, lapse or error becomes a real threat.Stay vigilant, know your limitations and use countermeasures to avoid the pitfalls of too much stress, too much pressure and fatigue.