Objective sleep tracking for fatigue management in cargo pilots: six months of continuous smart-ring monitoring

Total sleep time in 13 cargo pilots wearing an Ultrahuman smart ring was 48 minutes shorter on the night before a flight and 28 minutes shorter after the first sleep.

• Why it matters: Roster-based and self-reported fatigue estimates miss how sleep actually shifts around real flight timing, limiting precise rest planning for aviation fatigue risk management.
• What they did: In a 2026 observational cohort, 1,504 linked sleep sessions were analyzed with linear mixed-effects models, comparing each session to the same pilot’s rest nights using 95% confidence intervals.
• The result: Sleep duration also varied by clock time, with 57 minutes less before departures from 06:00h–11:59h and 97 minutes less after landings from 00:00h–05:59h, enabling rest planning around these times.

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