Episode Details

DESCRIPTION

One in eight airline pilots is depressed. More than half of us have avoided a doctor to protect our licence. This is why pilots stay silent, what it costs at home, and where to get help.

This is A Pilot Explains: one story, sixteen minutes, told from the flight deck. We are trained to report every defect on the aircraft, and nobody trains us to report one on ourselves. This episode is for the men who fly you home tonight: the contract pilot who walks through his front door and gets looked at like a visitor, and the local pilot who is at the dinner table every evening and not really there. South Africa held a National Aviation Gender Summit last month, and that is real progress. There is no summit for the other 80%, so Bryan does the one thing nobody else has scheduled.

IN THIS EPISODE

The homecoming nobody talks about, on a long-haul contract or a local roster

Why there is no summit for men, and the 120-year-old programme called wind your neck in and push on

The Harvard survey: one in eight airline pilots depressed, one in 25 with thoughts of being better off dead

The 2022 survey of 3,765 pilots: 56% have avoided a doctor to protect their medical certificate

Why the licence is not a qualification but an identity, and why that keeps pilots quiet

The Germanwings report, and the fear it named as a contributing factor

Joseph Emerson: six years of hidden depression, the jump seat over Oregon, and what he said afterwards

The family cost: what 300 pilots said about coming home, and the contract life nobody has studied

South Africa's three airline closures, the Gulf job, and Bryan's own two years in a flat in Johannesburg

The Gulf numbers: 68% severely fatigued, 45% asleep at the controls at least once

What is changing: Europe's mandatory peer support, the FAA antidepressant list, and the real denial rate of one in 1,000

Mayday SA, the 24-hour peer support line for South African pilots, running since 2013

The one-line checklist: pick one person and say one true sentence

I'm Bryan Roseveare. I was an airline captain. I still go to work on the flight deck. It's just a full flight simulator now, and the pilots I train are the ones who fly you around.

IF YOU NEED SOMEONE TO TALK TO

Mayday SA, 24-hour peer support for South African licence holders → 012 333 6000 (from outside SA: +27 12 333 6000)

Mayday SA website → https://mayday-sa.org.za/

SADAG Suicide Crisis Line, 24 hours → 0800 567 567

SOURCES

Wu et al., Airplane pilot mental health and suicidal thoughts, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Environmental Health, 2016 → https://doi.org/10.1186/s12940-016-0200-6

Hoffman et al., Healthcare avoidance in aircraft pilots due to concern for aeromedical certificate loss, survey of 3,765 pilots, 2022 → https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35166258/

FAA Mental Health and Aviation Medical Clearances Aviation Rulemaking Committee, Final Report, April 2024 → https://www.faa.gov/sites/faa.gov/files/Mental_Health_ARC_Final_Report_RELEASED.pdf

BEA Final Report, Germanwings Airbus A320 D-AIPX, 24 March 2015 → https://bea.aero/uploads/tx_elydbrapports/BEA2015-0125.en-LR.pdf

Multnomah County District Attorney, Joseph Emerson plea, Horizon Air Flight 2059 → https://www.mcda.us/index.php/news/former-alaska-airlines-pilot-pleads-no-contest-to-trying-to-shut-down-horizon-flight-2059-engines-over-oregon

Avis, Bor and Eriksen, The Impact of Work on Pilots' Personal Relationships, Centre for Aviation Psychology, London, 2019 → https://doi.org/10.1027/2192-0923/a000157

Aljurf et al., Sleepiness, fatigue and depression among Gulf airline pilots, Sleep and Breathing, 2017 → https://doi.org/10.1007/s11325-017-1565-7

LSE survey of 7,239 European pilots on fatigue and wellbeing, BALPA, 2016 → https://www.balpa.org/2016/12/07/london-school-of-