Addis Ababa, Aug 19 : Two pilots are believed to have fallen asleep and missed their landing the flight that took them from Sudan to Ethiopia According to reports in the media. The incident took place aboard the Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737-800 enroute from Khartoum to Addis Ababa, according to an article by the Commercial Aviation News site Aviation Herald, CNN reported.
The website indicates that the plane was at 37,000 feet using autopilot when it failed lower to Addis Ababa Bole Airport, which was its scheduled destination on August 15.
Air traffic control personnel were not able to contact the crew despite several attempts to contact.However alarms were triggered when the plane smashed into the runway and continued on the runway, CNN reported.
The aircraft then started to descend, before landing at a safe distance within 25 minutes.
Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) data shows the aircraft overflying the runway, before beginning its descent and maneuvering for another approach.
Aerospace analyst Alex Macheras has since taken to Twitter to express his dismay at the “deeply worrying incident,” which he believes could be the result of exhaustion of the pilot.
“Pilot fatigue is not a new phenomenon and continues to be one of the biggest dangers to safety in the air -globally,” he tweeted on Thursday.
The report comes months after pilots from Southwest Airlines and Delta Air Lines warned executives of airlines that fatigue among pilots was on the rise .They they urged them to consider fatigue and the resulting errors as a risk to safety.
“Fatigue that is both acute and chronic is now Southwest Airlines’ number-one safety danger,” the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association SWAPA, also known as SWAPA addressed airline executives in an email in April, CNN reported.
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