Pilots ‘fell asleep at controls during flight’

CONCERNS over pilot fatigue are growing after it emerged that two crew members fell asleep at the controls of a long-haul flight.

One of the pilots said he fell asleep for about 10 minutes while his over-tired co-pilot also took a nap during a scheduled break.

Neither the airline nor the route of the flight was revealed.

The disclosure came after a study commissioned by pilots’ union Balpa showed that 45% of 492 pilots questioned had suffered from “significant fatigue”. Around 20% said their ability to fly an aircraft was “compromised” more than once a week.

The pilot who nodded off on a flight said the aircraft had continued on autopilot but that it would have been easy to sleep through a warning alert if anything had gone wrong.

He said: “When I woke up, it was a big adrenalin rush. The first thing you do, obviously, is check your height and your speeds and all of your instrumentation.

“The worst scenario is that the autopilot would disconnect itself and then the aircraft would lose or gain height and that would be extremely dangerous as you’d go into the path of oncoming aircraft.”

Balpa is concerned that fatigue problems could worsen under EU proposals to increase flying hours.

Balpa general secretary Jim McAuslan said: “Fatigue among pilots is a real worldwide problem. Tiredness is now accounting for between 15% and 20% of accidents. Now, incredibly, the EU wants to increase flying hours.”

As many as 40% of the pilots found themselves having to fly more than the regulation hours at least twice a month to cope with the volume of flights.

Balpa said the Civil Aviation Authority does allow these “discretionary hours” to deal with difficult situations but they are supposed to be a rarity.