Many commercial aircrafts now in service are jet planes of large capacities. If any of the crew who operates such large planes has disorders of the vestibular system, it would present serious risk to the large number of passengers traveling together.
It has been known that less experienced pilots or pilots in training occasionally manifest air sickness in flight or unsteadiness after landing.
In order to survey the nature and frequency of disturbance in the sense of equilibrium among the commercial pilots, questionnaires were sent to a total of 1000 pilots, copilots, flight engineers and navigators, and 39.2% were recovered. The results showed that 73% of the crew experienced disorder of the sense of equilibrium in flight, 39.2%(140) had episodes of air rickness, while unsteadiness occurred in 26.5%(105).
Temporary spatial disorientation during flight occurred in 16.0%(29).
The author attributed the low incidence of disturbance in the sense of equilibrium shown in this study to the fact that the subjects of this study were limited to crews of commercial aircrafts.
