Pilots are exhausted. A new survey suggests 3 out of 4 European pilots dozed off over the course of a month while flying a plane.

• Pilots say they're so exhausted they're struggling to stay awake while operating flights.
• Around 75% in a survey of European pilots said they'd taken a "microsleep" in recent weeks.

Some European pilots are suffering from exhaustion and taking "microsleeps" while operating aircraft to cope, a new survey reveals.

Around 75% of the respondents said that they had had at least one microsleep while operating an aircraft in the four weeks prior, according to a July survey conducted by Baines Simmons, an aviation safety consultancy, for the European Cockpit Association. One-quarter of respondents said that they'd had five or more microsleeps, defined as "brief uncontrolled periods of sleep" that can happen with their eyes open or closed, in the four weeks prior to them completing the survey.

The report highlights concerns about pilots' fatigue levels and says that airlines should be doing more to manage this, such as making fatigue reporting easier, changing schedules to provide them with more rest time between duties, and improving hotel accommodation if the crew can't sleep well.

"The cause of this fatigue may be within (e.g. due to rosters) or outside (e.g. due to poor sleep at home) the operation, but the risk sits within the operation, and therefore must be managed," Baines Simmons wrote in its report. The survey included pilots flying passenger, cargo, and charter flights.

Less than a quarter of the survey's nearly 7,000 respondents said that fatigue risk was "very" or "mostly" well managed at their airline. Nearly a third said that fatigue risk was not managed well, with pilots flying for UK and Ireland-based airlines most likely to say this.

"These are worrying signs and clear indications that fatigue safety risks are not well managed in many European airlines," ECA President Otjan de Bruijn said in a statement. "If these are the results we are seeing already in June and July, fatigue levels in August can have gone only one way – upwards."

The European Union Aviation Safety Agency warned of fatigue concerns in a June safety information bulletin, which noted that staff shortages could lead to crew members experiencing fatigue and potentially cause safety problems.

82% of the ECA survey's respondents said they they knew how to submit a fatigue report to their airline, but only 44.1% said the system was easy to access and just over a quarter said they were "quick and easy" to complete. Only 10% of respondents said that fatigue reports "have led to operational changes to improve safety." The survey showed huge differences in pilots' attitudes towards fatigue reports between countries where airlines were based, with Irish and Maltese airlines faring the worst.

"Without an effective reporting system, the airline is unlikely to have an accurate picture of fatigue in the operation, limiting their ability to manage fatigue risk by implementing effective mitigations," Baines Simmons wrote in its report.

Nearly three-quarters of pilots who responded to the survey said that they had "always," "usually," or "sometimes" had insufficient rest to allow them to recover from fatigue between duties over the previous four weeks, which covered the buildup to peak summer travel season.