Ethiopian Airlines has disclosed the suspension of two of its pilots for sleeping and missing their landing during a flight from Khartoum, the Sudan capital, to Addis Ababa, the capital city of Ethiopia.
According to FlightAware, a flight-tracking website, the plane overshot the runway at Bole International Airport in the Ethiopian capital on Monday, August 15, 2022, before landing safely.
The pilots were, however, said to have fallen asleep during the flight and were only woken up by an alarm triggered when autopilot mode disconnected.
The plane circled back to land 25 minutes later, the flight data revealed.
Confirming the development, Ethiopian Airlines said the flight ET343 had temporarily lost communication with air traffic control but landed safely after it was restored.
“The concerned crew have been removed from operation pending further investigation. Appropriate corrective action will be taken based on the outcome of the investigation,” the airline stated.
The flight between the two capitals normally takes less than two hours.
Reacting to this development, London-based aviation analyst Alex Macheras described the incident as “deeply concerning,” as he blamed it on widespread fatigue that poses a major threat to air safety.
“Pilot fatigue is nothing new, and continues to pose one of the most significant threats to air safety — internationally,” he stated.
Meanwhile, BizWatch Nigeria understands that the sanctioning of the sleeping pilots may have been inspired by the airline’s latest crash, which was in March 2019.
At the time, a Boeing 737 MAX operated by Ethiopian Airlines crashed six minutes after takeoff into a field southeast of Addis Ababa, killing all 157 people on board.
The disaster, five months after a similar crash in Indonesia, triggered the global grounding of the jet for 20 months, before it returned to service in late 2020.ar.
