Welcome, this is your captain sleeping

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This was published 14 years ago

Welcome, this is your captain sleeping

By Hugo Martin

LOS ANGELES: Airline passengers who are shaken by news that two Northwest Airline pilots are under investigation for overshooting a Minneapolis airport after possibly nodding off will not want to hear this: sometimes pilots sleep in the cockpit.

''Pilots on occasion do take controlled naps,'' said Barry Schiff, an aviation safety consultant and retired pilot. ''So this is not without precedent.''

Although the Federal Aviation Administration bars snoozing in the cockpit, several airline pilots say they are surprised such napping mishaps have not happened more often, considering longer work schedules for pilots and advances in aviation that make planes easier to fly.

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The issue of cockpit naps came under scrutiny after the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board announced they were looking into why Northwest Flight 188, from San Diego to Minneapolis, overshot its airport by 240 kilometres before turning around.

If investigators conclude that the Northwest pilots were snoozing at 37,000 feet, several current and retired pilots say it would not be a surprise.

''Fatigue is a real problem,'' said Sam Mayer, an American Airlines pilot and spokesman for the Allied Pilots Association, the union that represents 11,500 American Airlines pilots. ''I don't know what happened [in Minneapolis], but I wouldn't be surprised if they were asleep.''

It would not be the first time.

A Go Airline flight in February overshot Hilo International Airport in Hawaii by more than 30 kilometres. The pilots admitted to federal officials that they fell asleep in the cockpit while the plane was on autopilot. A safety board report said there was an 18-minute gap when no one could reach the flight by radio.

One of the pilots admitted later to investigators that he regularly took planned naps in the cockpit but said this was the first time he had inadvertently fallen asleep. Both pilots were fired.

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In 2004 a pilot admitted to federal officials that he and the first officer on an Airbus A319 fell asleep on an overnight flight from Baltimore to Denver. They awoke to frantic radio calls from the air traffic control tower.

In 1998 all three pilots on a Boeing 747 from Seoul to Anchorage, Alaska, nodded off. The plane landed safely but the captain admitted that he and his crew made several minor navigational errors because of fatigue.

''Each time when I awoke,'' he told federal aviation officials in an anonymous report that did not name the airline, ''the other two crew members were also asleep.''

Los Angeles Times

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