A wake-up call on the dangers of closing our eyes to sleep deprivation

HE had one hour’s sleep the night before.

Only one. One hour’s sleep before stepping into the cockpit of a passenger jet as captain of the crew flying it from South America to Europe.

He said so himself, on the black box recording retrieved long after the plane went down in the Atlantic, killing three Irish doctors and 225 other passengers. The crash happened in 2009, on an overnight flight to Paris from Rio de Janeiro.