Pilots fall asleep mid-flight, miss landing by 25 minutes
Two Ethiopian Airlines pilots fell asleep during a flight from Khartoum to Addis Ababa, fell asleep at 37,000 feet and the flight missed landing on its designated runway.
Air Traffic Control (ATC) made several attempts to contact the pilots but received no response. The pilots woke up after 25 minutes after missing the designated landing time. The autopilot kept the flight in the air while the pilots took a nap.
The crew then maneuvered the airplane for a safe landing on runway 25L about 25 minutes after crossing the runway at FL370.
In a series of tweets, aviation analyst Alex Macheras blamed airman fatigue for the incident and said the incident was deeply disturbing.
“Deeply concerns the incident at Africa's largest airline - Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 #ET343 was still at a cruising altitude of 37,000 feet when it arrived at its destination Addis Ababa. Why didn't it start descending to land? Both pilots were asleep," he wrote on Twitter.