737 Continues Past Destination, but Lands Safely

The cockpit-crew of an Ethiopian Airlines flight from Sudan to the Ethiopian capital city of Addis Ababa fell asleep at the controls of their Boeing 737-800. Air traffic controllers tried repeatedly to contact the aircraft as it continued past its filed destination of Bole International Airport, and proceeded leisurely westbound for the duration of the pilots’ naps.

It wasn’t until the sounding of a cockpit alarm woke the two airmen that communications were restored, and the airliner landed safely—about 25-minutes behind schedule.

In a post-incident statement, Ethiopian Airlines—Africa’s largest air-carrier—asserted the crew had been removed from flight duty, and that “… appropriate corrective action will be taken based on the outcome of the investigation. Safety has always been and will continue to be our first priority.”

Notwithstanding its resorting to forced furloughs and investigations, the air-carrier has yet to publicly state the pilots fell asleep. Ethiopian Airlines maintains it merely received a report about a flight temporarily losing communication with air traffic control.

Aviation pundits are wont to make broad, reductionist statements about pilot fatigue in support of de rigueur and dire warnings of an imminent pilot shortage. Cries for increasingly restrictive duty and flight time regulations have echoed throughout the stuffy confines of Washington D.C. (and later Oklahoma City) since Ford Trimotors and Boeing 307s shimmied and clattered at commercial aviation’s vanguard.

In point of fact, fatigue is an historic but manageable aspect of the piloting profession—a physiological hardship recognized and accounted for by legislators, regulators, and airmen alike. Current Federal Aviation Regulations comprehensively address and circumspectly limit the work and rest intervals of individual pilots and flight-crews alike. The efficacy of subject regulations manifests in the exceedingly low instance of pilots falling asleep on the job.

Individuals and organizations seeking to eradicate pilot fatigue through the exercise of further regulatory control fail to acknowledge the stone-cold fact that it is incumbent upon pilots themselves to properly utilize their legally mandated rest intervals. No legislation—barring abject tyranny—may dictate the manner in which pilots spend their off-work hours. The system works because the vast majority of professional pilots are conscientious individuals whose work and rest habits are guided by keen senses of responsibility and accountability.

Nevertheless, aviation, as with every profession and field of endeavor, is afflicted with a small but irksome minority of non-hackers—the sorts apt to fall asleep at altitude. To saddle a majority of eminently professional, consistently scrupulous aviators with draconian regulations because a few dullards behaved stupidly is as unjust as confiscating all driver’s licenses because one or two individuals drove drunk, or taking guns from law-abiding Iowans because gang-members in Chicago cannot be brought to heel.

FMI: www.ethiopianairlines.com