Flight ET343 from Khartoum in Sudan to Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa and missed the landing because the pilots had fallen asleep.

The ATC had contacted the pilots to authorize them to descend to the apt in Addis Ababa from the altitude of 37,000 ft but did not receive response to numerous requests until the plane flew over the airport at 37,000 ft,  when the cockpit sounds of the autopilot disconnection woke the pilots.

https://www.businesstoday.in/trending/world/story/ethiopian-airlines-pilots-fall-asleep-mid-flight-miss-landing-at-addis-ababa-airport-345086-2022-08-19

After these pilots fall asleep in flight, new instructions will be issued to stop these situations from happening in flight.

Pilots will be provided with the necessary information on the equipment of an ... alarm clock to be programmed before the flight begins!😁

This s a subject that interests me more and more because I've heard of more than one incident like this.  A few years ago I heard of an incident where the pilot and copilot were playing some game and overflew their airport.

It makes me think that being an airline pilot must be incredible boring except maybe for takeoff and landing.

You are on autopilot sitting there waiting for a controller to tell you to change direction and/or altitude.  What is there to do?  At least the passengers behind you have movies to watch.

In these days of advanced technology and automation do we still need pilots in airliners?  Probably to stand by for emergencies if they can be awakened in time.  But should we be making more work for airline pilots in the cockpit?  Give them more to do than taking off, landing and dialing in speed, altitude and course?

And I have always wondered about sim pilots who fly the heavy iron on overseas or transcontinental flights.  Do they sit and front of their monitors flying in real time awaiting instructions?  Or on a flight from Boston to Paris do they leave it in the autopilot and GPS NAV modes and after takeoff and establishing course and altitude get up and make the beds, cook breakfast, do the breakfast dishes, vacuum the living room, read the newspaper and return to the computer in time to land? 

Years ago I was driving from Denver to the East Coast on I-70.  I was listening to the truckers talk on their CB radios.  One of them said he'd been making two round trips a week between Denver and Kansas City for 14 years.  I thought how incredibly boring that must have been.  He must have known every bridge and culvert and pothole and crack in the highway by heart.  But at least he had something to do.  Steer the truck continuously and deal with traffic.  Make pit stops for meals a fuel.  Chat with other truckers on his CB.  He certainly couldn't fall asleep without catastrophic results.

Noel

 

Flight crew deficencies @ Ethiopian poke its head up once again. Poor training, CRM and now fatigue risk management. That airline needs to take a step back and take a seriously hard look at its Flight ops department before the inevitable happens. I'm sure they would still point the finger somewhere else though.

They should of had pause at TOD checked 😆.

It made BBC news:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-62602611

And that's one of the reasons why for years flying the big jets never interested me.

Sim pilots made it pretty plain that their flights consisted of taking off and landing, while leaving the autopilot to run things while they slept, went to the store, watched tv.....

Whatever.

Now that I'm flying jets, I keep flights short because I just cant see the fun of checking back every few hours to see if either the sim or the plane has crashed.

Seems real life flying has the same boredom issue.

Edited August 19, 20223 yr by HiFlyer

This isn't just on the pilots though and it's also not about airline flying being boring. The average block time for this flight is 1:29 h so it's a short flight that doesn't get boring. Given that this time includes taxi you'll be in the air for maybe a little over an hour which means a short cruise in which you don't really have much time from TOC to preparing and briefing the approach, so it keeps you busy and there isn't really any period that would be long enough to get tired from and fall asleep. Short legs are rather intense.

The flight in question departed Khartoum at 3:26 am local time, in the middle of the night. The same aircraft arrived at Khartoum at 1:43 am before that from Addis Ababa so this was most likely the same crew putting in a night shift. Since these legs aren't that long in total duration it's likely they flew another leg or two before, in which case this was the end of a full work day in the middle of the night.

So this was more than likely severe fatigue caused by working hours that simply go against human nature exacerbated by flying a couple short legs. In my opinion, simply resorting to keeping crews within the allowed duty time doesn't cut it. If you have hours off before going to work in the afternoon that's nice but if your sleep cycle is normal you won't be sleeping in that time and get tired in the evening regardless of whether you're still within legal duty time. For me, this is on the industry and another pair of fatigued pilots fell victim to it. This is obviously not the first time this happened.

 

Unfortunately, if you are not on a long haul with several pilots, you can't get someone to take over and you can't pull over and have a nap as you can when driving a truck or a bus; truck and bus industries used to be notorious for 'asleep at the wheel' incidents, so these days they have factored in the need for adequate rest to happen to improve safety, with mandatory breaks, tachographs and the like.

You can book off duty as an airline pilot if you think you are fatigued, but you'll sometimes face investigation, disciplinary action, orcan fall out of favour with those who schedule the work and such, because many airlines don't see the pilot hours limit as a safety precaution, but more of a target. So on long flight sections across places where there is little to no ATC interaction and not much else to do and there is only a crew of two, it's easy to see why nodding off is a possibility.

The same thing has been noted with freight train drivers, who also cannot pull over for a nap on long stretches of their journeys. Alarmingly, a fairly recent survey of Canadian freight train drivers found that out of a total of 1,790 whom were asked about it, three quarters of them reported that they had fallen asleep whilst working at least once in the preceding month!

24 minutes ago, Chock said:

Alarmingly, a fairly recent survey of Canadian freight train drivers found that out of a total of 1,790 whom were asked about it, three quarters of them reported that they had fallen asleep whilst working at least once in the preceding month!

I thought freight and passenger trains had 'dead man' switches so if the engineer falls asleep or has some other mishap his foot come off the witch and the train comes to a stop.

Of course the engineer can place something heavy on the switch to override it.

Noel

 

3 hours ago, birdguy said:

Of course the engineer can place something heavy on the switch to override it.

Now I'm thinking about The Taking of Pelham One Two three..... 

9 hours ago, birdguy said:

Years ago I was driving from Denver to the East Coast on I-70.  I was listening to the truckers talk on their CB radios.  One of them said he'd been making two round trips a week between Denver and Kansas City for 14 years.  I thought how incredibly boring that must have been.  He must have known every bridge and culvert and pothole and crack in the highway by heart.  But at least he had something to do.  Steer the truck continuously and deal with traffic.  Make pit stops for meals a fuel.  Chat with other truckers on his CB.  He certainly couldn't fall asleep without catastrophic results.

Noel

 

Unfortunately truckers have fallen asleep at the wheel as well. Probably not as common as regular drivers who do it when traveling but it happens.

10 hours ago, Chock said:

Unfortunately, if you are not on a long haul with several pilots, you can't get someone to take over and you can't pull over and have a nap as you can when driving a truck or a bus; truck and bus industries used to be notorious for 'asleep at the wheel' incidents, so these days they have factored in the need for adequate rest to happen to improve safety, with mandatory breaks, tachographs and the like.

You can book off duty as an airline pilot if you think you are fatigued, but you'll sometimes face investigation, disciplinary action, orcan fall out of favour with those who schedule the work and such, because many airlines don't see the pilot hours limit as a safety precaution, but more of a target. So on long flight sections across places where there is little to no ATC interaction and not much else to do and there is only a crew of two, it's easy to see why nodding off is a possibility.

The same thing has been noted with freight train drivers, who also cannot pull over for a nap on long stretches of their journeys. Alarmingly, a fairly recent survey of Canadian freight train drivers found that out of a total of 1,790 whom were asked about it, three quarters of them reported that they had fallen asleep whilst working at least once in the preceding month!

Sounds like the airline industry needs a major overhaul where "on duty hours" are concerned. If that means increased fares for paying passengers, then tough. Far too many people expect cheap flights these days. It's about time that they were given a reality check.

The airline Ethiopian Airlines on the case of the two pilots who fell asleep in the cockpit while missing the landing during a flight from the Sudanese capital Khartoum to Addis Ababa, with a press release said:

"The affected crew has been removed from operations pending further investigation. Appropriate corrective actions will be taken based on the outcome of the investigation."

In this case, we must also ask ourselves why the F/A did not realize that on this flight which lasts about an hour and a half, that the pilots had not started the descent and, above all, that they had not received any notice from the pilots of the start of the descent towards the Addis Ababa apt.