Both pilots appear to have fallen asleep. The story is unusual, but it ends well. The New Zealand Herald reported that the two pilots of a plane connecting Khartoum, Sudan, with Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, earlier this week fell asleep during the flight.
As a result, the Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 did not begin its descent on approach to the airport as it should have and the autopilot held it at 11,000 m above the ground. Air traffic controllers tried several times in vain to reach the plane.
Pilot fatigue, a known risk
The autopilot eventually paused as the plane overran the runway it was supposed to be taking, triggering an alarm that woke the two pilots, the daily reports.
Deeply worrying incident at Africa’s largest airline – Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 #ET343 was still at a cruising altitude of 37,000 feet when it reached destination Addis Ababa
Why hadn’t it started descending for a landing? Both pilots were asleep. https://t.co/cPPMsVHIJD pic.twitter.com/RpnxsdtRBf
– Alex Macheras (@AlexInAir) August 18, 2022
They finally landed the plane at Addis Ababa airport about 20 minutes late. According to Alex Macheras, an aviation specialist who spoke on Twitter on Friday, the issue of pilot fatigue is far from a new problem and represents “one of the greatest threats to international flight safety”.