The job of being a pilot can be demanding. Whether it's dealing with long and unpredictable hours, average accommodation, or simply trying to find a decent meal, it's all a challenge. Add to this a full day of flying, including planning, demanding routes, dirt strips, refuelling, baggage handling, and not to mention passengers, it's a full-time gig. We haven't even included home-life pressures - bills, crying babies or second jobs - all adding their weight to a pilot's wellbeing. PILOT: Finally.

WOMAN: Sorry, I got stuck in traffic. MAN: And this makes high workloads, stress, lack of sleep and struggling to stay healthy real issues. They can be a simple daily challenge or an overwhelming problem. It just depends on how they're managed. IAN HOSEGOOD: Helping people help themselves can sometimes be challenging. We're not all as good at planning for our health and wellbeing as we might be, for example, planning for our finances. We think it's of mutual benefit for us to invest in people's wellness, and the things that they can do to feel well today and this year and this month, and there are things that they can do to make sure that they're still well in 5, 10, 20 years from now. So it's about investing in your future but also doing good health and wellbeing measures on any given day as well.

MICHAEL DRANE: Diet, I think, is... It's an interesting conundrum of the 21st century, because there are any number of programs for what you must eat. My mum, who is a nutritionist, said, "Moderation in all things. " And there's probably some sense in that. What we do know is that there are a whole range of illnesses associated with overweight and overeating, and Australia is unfortunately a world leader in that respect. And eating vast amounts of refined carbohydrate sugar is clearly not good for us. We're in the middle of an epidemic of diabetes. And so the common-sense advice to moderate the amount of sugar that we eat, to moderate the amount of unrefined carbohydrate, is sensible.

DARRELL BONETTI: Well, for pilots regarding nutrition, they really just need to focus on eating real food, focusing on eating real food, which is not being modified too much, which is difficult to achieve these days, but eating real food versus eating packet, processed food. Getting as close to nature as possible with your eating pattern. And that can be very, very broad. Making sure that an individual can eat fruit, vegetables, healthy meats, fish, nuts, eggs, dairy if that's appropriate for them - that is real food, and I think everyone can achieve that.

GLENN SINGLEMAN: The interesting thing about health and wellbeing is that the evidence is there. It's been there for 20 years. If you look after yourself, you stay fit, then you're going to live longer and live a better quality life. But people don't take this on board. I mean, the population exercise rate in Australia has actually declined over the last 20 years, instead of increased. And yet we've come to know that exercise is, you know, is really beneficial for our health and wellbeing. But we're not taking that information on board, because there are so many other priorities nipping at our heels, those societal priorities.

One of the benefits of being a doctor is, not only do I understand this research and what it means, I've been able to incorporate that into my life. I prioritise my health, so that I go running. I prioritise my diet, so I don't eat fatty foods. I'm actually a vegan, because it's the diet with the best evidence in terms of mortality and morbidity. Everybody knows this stuff. When you're sitting for hours in a seat, that's not a very healthy thing to do. It's not a natural thing to do. Our bodies were designed to move.

It's a well recognised risk factor that more than 48 hours' immobility per month dramatically increases your risk of getting a deep vein thrombosis. Pilots really do, and all their crew, need to spend a bit of time having health and their own health and safety and personal safety as a priority. And that, to me, is about exercise and diet.

Yeah, Qantas is very lucky to have an in-house medical department, and we do have a health and wellbeing program. Some smaller organisations may not have those sorts of resources to hand. But certainly, CASA itself has some really good health and wellbeing materials on its website. And then also what we tend to suggest is that these smaller organisations go to the peak bodies - The Heart Foundation for cardiac health, Diabetes Australia for good diabetes advice. So we look to those peak bodies, and they've got some fantastic resources that organisations just pick up and run with. When we look at creating a healthy culture, one of the risks to a healthy culture for us in particular is people being overseas on layovers in particular. And some of the risks that are there is that people can be quite isolated.

Not everybody is a social person, and we can see that isolation can be a risk factor. We've also got risk factors around people sometimes on layovers, you know, tending to drink too much alcohol, not get enough exercise and perhaps not eat so well either. So what we're doing is encouraging people through education and training and tools and resources that we provide to them about how to be connected, how to conduct activities like exercise and cycling and social connectedness, and finding out what's available in those locations,

rather than being in their hotel room and perhaps being isolated and otherwise perhaps just using alcohol as a way of dealing with the boredom when they're on a layover. (MACHINE BEEPS) (EXTENDED BEEP) KIRK CAMPBELL: At Seair, we've got a breathalyser in the office, and all our flight crew, all our engineering, anyone who is involved in the aviation sensitive activity is required to do a breathalyser in the morning.

That's a good result. PETER GASH: No alcohol detected. Smiley face for Kirk. The alcohol testing is great, 'cause it's just a part of the culture. They know the person sitting next to them is definitely a zero, that the guy in the workshop's definitely a zero. I'm also proud to say that in the 10 or 11 years, or whatever it is, maybe 12 years since we installed it - and we're onto its second one, we wore the first one out 'cause everyone blows in it every day - we've never had anyone blow over.

This is a part of my responsibility, my commitment to myself, my team, and I'm gonna do it right. - Post-alcohol impairment is really also known as a hangover, essentially, and how much of a hangover people get is affected by quite a few different factors. First of all, it might be affected by their tolerance, and that really relates to how much they regularly drink.

It also clearly obviously relates to how much they've drunk in that particular sitting. And some of the effects are obvious - things like being dehydrated, having a headache, feeling tired, concentration difficulty - those are all flight safety relevant issues. But some of them are a little less obvious, and, for example, what happens with alcohol is it actually gets into our semi-circular canals, which is our balance organ in our inner ear, and it makes the fluid in those inner ears far more sloshy or liquid,

and that means that our balance is actually put off. So those sorts of subtle performance impairments can last quite a long time after an alcohol session, so it's really important for people not just to consider if they don't have a headache anymore and they're feeling generally OK, that there may not be some impairment. There will be some impairment.

So it's really important that people understand that and they drink responsibly when they're in proximity to a flight operation. PILOT: Welcome aboard. PASSENGER: Thank you. - (LAUGHS) WOMAN: How you feeling? - Yeah, haven't been better. - (CHUCKLES) - Where pilots' mental health and wellbeing is concerned, one of the biggest difficulties is the lack of communication.

Who can you tell? The average alpha male finds it very difficult to say "help". And there's been a lot of effort put into developing pathways for people to say just that - "Help, things aren't going right." In the larger airlines, we know that they have put a lot of emphasis upon building peer support and channels for reporting of concerns.

We think peer support is the single most effective intervention that can be done for pilots with mental health issues and alcohol and other drug issues. It means that people are far more likely to seek help early and get referred in to the appropriate mechanisms. MELANIE TODD: A lot of young pilots are going, you know, moving a long way from home, they're without a basic peer support group in some remote locations.

They'll have other pilots, but if something happens or they're ostracised from that group or there's something about that group that doesn't click, then they don't have a support base. MAZ SALVATI: One thing that I've brought up with the team lately is mental health, you know... You know, you might see someone having a bit of a laugh at dinnertime, but they may have had a strenuous day and they may be stressed, so I think it's important to talk about it and not to hide, you know?

I always make sure that I'm asking people, "Are you OK? Are you stressed? "If so, why are you stressed?" - So being mindful of some of the signs in people that they're under additional stress. So, their personality can change in terms of how they respond to you. So somebody who is normally outgoing might become quiet.

Somebody who is normally quiet might snap more easily or be more vocal about not caring about anything anymore, you know? So, watching out for these general signs and saying, "OK, is something going on here?" and then actually having an intervention with that person to say, "Look, are you OK? This is not like you.

" - Sometimes we find ourselves in stressful situations, and it is what it is, you know? You can't help that. We're only humans. Humans get stressed and you'll never be able to beat that or fight that. But I think it's very important to just slow down, take a breath, and say, "Hey, look, listen, what's actually going on?" Because all it can take is one misjudged fuel calculation and you might find yourself in quite a fair bit of trouble.

There's some pretty basic things that you can do. First of all there's some attitudes that are very helpful in terms of wellbeing. So the attitudes that we look for is optimism. We try and make sure that people are looking at things in an optimistic way. There's gratitude, making sure that you feel grateful for what you've got.

And that really has been evidence-based shown to improve people's wellbeing. Mindfulness is a really good evidence-based skill that pilots and others can do to make sure that their mental wellbeing and resilience is strong. Also encouraging people to have social connectedness as well. Within Australia, we're very lucky to have an entire set-up, including CASA, which is aimed towards returning people to flying, not towards excluding people from flying.

Of course absolutely they need to be safe to return to the cockpit, but everybody's working towards making sure that we have that ability to do that. And people can come back in a limited capacity - they might need some supervision or some surveillance initially. As soon as they are safely able to return to the flight deck, they are.

TODD MICKLESON: Fatigue is a difficult one to manage, because fatigue affects everybody differently. It depends on a lot of things, you know, the hours that you work - some people are better working early mornings, late at night. Some people just are more robust at working longer hours than others. If you've got a duty where you're flying all night, you don't want to be up early in the morning and awake all day.

We've got to try and manage that, you know, try and get a sleep in the afternoon. (UPBEAT MUSIC) MATT FOX: Yeah, even at home, like, before I start night shift, um, it's helpful that my daughter's two, and she likes an afternoon sleep for a couple of hours, 'cause I sleep before night shift for two hours.

'Cause there are those nights, they don't happen often, but you can be out flying all night. And it is fatiguing between 2:00 and 6:00 in the morning, like, you do notice in the morning when the sun comes up, "Ooh, I've been flying all night." You do need those good rest hours. - Sleep is absolutely tantamount to wellbeing.

It has a significant impact on both physical health and mental health, and of course with the risk of fatigue within aviation operations, getting good sleep is really, really important. And the other thing we encourage within the sleep bucket is to make sure that people consider whether they may even have a sleep disorder.

So it's a pretty significantly common issue, particularly within the pilot community, to have sleep apnoea, for example. And sleep apnoea can affect not only your ability to deal with a difficult and challenging roster from an aviation perspective, but also can affect your health quite significantly as well, in terms of risk of heart disease and dementia and other health issues.

ROBERT FOSTERLEE: But fatigue is a multidimensional factor. I mean, there is loads of elements to fatigue. But sleep is at the base. You need to get reasonable amounts of sleep. And, you know, we have these kind of algorithms and rules of how many hours someone should get, but the one thing in life we don't learn is, what's your sleep? You might be a seven-hour sleeper.

I could be an eight-hour sleeper. And if I don't get my eight, I'm going to be fatigued. And so, we have to understand that sometimes when we look at these algorithms or these methods of kind of scheduling, what they're doing is, they're scheduling to the average. They're not scheduling to the individual.

And that can be, again, a bit dangerous, especially for those who might need more sleep than average. 'Cause there's...there are a few nine-hour sleepers out there too. And so by saying, "Oh, well, you got eight, you should be fine," that, again, can lead to someone developing fatigue. CARMEL HARRINGTON: Sleep is really essential, and if we don't sleep well, we're going to have cognitive deficits, so we're not going to be able to think and learn as well.

We're going to have health problems. We're more likely to develop cardiovascular or a chronic disease such as metabolic syndrome or type 2 diabetes. And on top of that, we're also not gonna feel very happy. So, we know lack of sleep affects our mental health as well. It's highly associated with the formation of... development of depression.

But if you're fatigued, you don't quite have the resources for it, and you become a bit short. You're irritable. Some people are susceptible to maybe anxiety or nervousness. Other people are more susceptible to maybe feeling negative mood states, we'd call it depression. So again, everybody's different, and they show that fatigue differently.

But the one thing that we can say is that it changes a person, their ability to kind of react. And so when I talk about the psychosocial, that means, oh, teamwork. It means communication. It means CRM. All of those things in the workplace get impacted from those elements of fatigue. "So, were you tired on the day?" "No, I wasn't tired, I was stressed.

" But isn't it a form of fatigue? I mean, it's not just about sleep. Oftentimes if you're emotionally upset, you don't sleep so well. Or sometimes you're not sleeping so well, and that leads again to that susceptibility to become more emotionally upset, and it's a bit of a spiral. I think sometimes if we focus too much on just getting sleep, we're missing out on the big picture and all of the other factors that kind of combine to facilitate performance.

PILOT: What the hell is going on in your head? CO-PILOT: I'm sorry, I'm just... - It's just not good enough! This is your incident! You deal with it! DREW DAWSON: Fatigue is always a shared responsibility. Both ours and many other people's research will show you that when somebody is fatigued in the workplace, it's about as likely to be a result of non-work-related factors as it is to be a result of work-related factors.

And as a result, the company or the organisation can only be really accountable for work-related fatigue. On the other hand, the individual needs to be responsible for non-work-related causes of fatigue. What we've seen in a number of the transport industry initiatives in the last few years is a tendency to realise that family are often the drivers of fatigue, and therefore families need to be part of the educational milieu in which that training and education occurs.

I think it's really important that we begin to understand, because it's fine if you decide, "I don't want to sleep tonight, "I'm gonna go and party or I'm gonna do whatever," provided you're not the driver of my child's school bus. It's a community issue, and we have to start judging people by what damage are you going to do by not sleeping? Are you gonna be my doctor? Are you gonna be my train driver? Are you gonna be my pilot? 'Cause maybe I've got a whole different interest in how you sleep if you're one of those people.