The two pilots of a Boeing 737 departed from Khartoum and headed for Addis Ababa fell asleep while flying eleven thousand meters high, missing the landing in the Ethiopian capital. This was revealed by the specialized magazine Aviation Herald, according to which air traffic tried, in vain, to contact the crew after they had passed the drop off point at Addis Ababa airport. The pilots of Ethiopian airlines woke up only when the alarm on the autopilot began to sound and at that point they began the maneuvers for the landing of the Boeing, which took place in safety. The episode dates back to last Monday and the route to be covered was less than two hours.
There were different reactions to the news, between the understanding for the increasingly compressed working hours to the shock of the fact that they had fallen asleep in flight. “I would not blame the Ethiopian crew in particular – it is something that could happen to any crew in the world and it probably has … The fault lies with the company and the regulators,” reads a comment on the Aviation Herald website.
Another user suggested there is only one solution: “Dismissal. End of story. Full stop.” Others saw the funny side of the story, commenting on Twitter: “Sleeping on the job leads to new heights!”. An aviation analyst, Alex Macheras, called the incident “deeply troubling”: “Pilot fatigue is nothing new and continues to represent one of the most significant threats to aviation safety internationally.”
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