Horror: Both pilots fall asleep in the cockpit at 37,000 feet height, miss landing
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: In a rare incident, both the pilots of Africa’s largest aviation channel, Ethiopian Airlines, fell asleep in their cockpit, 37,000 feet above the ground, missed landing, and woke up only after the alarm.
Aviation experts have blamed the pilots’ fatigue for such incidents.
According to the media reports on Friday, the two pilots fell asleep while flying a flight from Sudan’s Khartoum to Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa and missed their landing on Monday.
According to the Aviation Herald, Air Traffic Control (ATC) raised an alert when flight ET343 approached the airport but did not start the descent. While the pilots fell asleep, the Boeing 737’s autopilot system kept the plane cruising at 37,000 feet.
The ATC unsuccessfully tried to contact the fast-asleep pilots several times. When the plane overflew the runway, where it was supposed to land, the autopilot disconnected. That triggered an alarm, which woke up the pilots, the news outlet said.
They then maneuvered the aircraft around for landing on the runway 25 minutes later. No one was harmed, and the plane landed safely.
It remained on the ground for about 150 minutes before taking its next flight.
The aviation surveillance system ADS-B data confirmed the incident occurred, and the aircraft flew over the runway. It posted an image of the aircraft’s flight path, which shows an infinity-like loop near the Addis Ababa airport.
They reported a similar incident in May when two pilots fell asleep on a flight from New York to Rome as the plane traveled 38,000 feet above the ground
An investigation carried out by the aviation regulator confirmed that both the pilots of ITA Airways were sleeping as their Airbus 330 flew over France.
