Two Ethiopian Airlines pilots flying a Boeing 787-800 from Sudan to Ethiopia reportedly missed their landing last Monday because they were both asleep, causing considerable alarm at Air Traffic Control on the ground.
The pilots for Africa’s largest airline allegedly fell asleep during flight ET343 from Khartoum, Sudan, to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, according to the Aviation Herald.
The plane approached the international airport on Monday 15 August but did not begin its descent, alarming Air Traffic Control operators. The plane’s autopilot system kept the aircraft cruising at 37,000 feet (about 11,000 metres) while the flight crew slept on.
Air Traffic Control attempted unsuccessfully several times to contact the crew. Finally, the autopilot disconnected, triggering a cockpit alarm which woke the crew, who then landed the plane without incident. The FlightAware image shown here outlines the ET343 flightpath over the Ethiopian capital.
Both pilots are reported to have been suspended pending investigation.
Pilot fatigue is a problem in modern aviation. It goes without saying that pilots are not meant to sleep at the same time. A horrendous air crash in 2010, which killed 158 people, involved sleepy pilots. The Guardian’s memorable headline on that incident was: Pilot was snoring before Air India crash
In that 2010 crash, the pilot of the Air India plane involved could be heard snoring heavily on the cockpit voice recorder shortly before impact, an investigators’ report found.
The official inquiry into the incident – in which the Air India Boeing 737-800 overshot a hilltop runway at Mangalore in western India and hurtled down a ravine before bursting into flames – concluded that the Serbian captain was asleep for more than half of the three-hour flight from Dubai. Investigators found the pilot was “disorientated” when he attempted to land the plane, the Guardian reported.
The Hindustan Times said that when investigators listened to the cockpit voice recorder, they heard “heavy nasal snoring and breathing” from pilot Zlatko Glusica. Glusica had awoken before the landing, but he was believed to have had “sleep inertia”.
Written by Peter Needham
