By Birthe Wenge
Dear pilots, we are now approaching for landing at…
On a scheduled flight from Sudan to Ethiopia, two pilots in the cockpit missed the landing.
The incident happened on board an Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737-800 on Monday (15 August), according to the Aviation Herald website. The machine was on its way from Khartoum to Addis Ababa “when the pilots were sleeping” and “the plane flew on,” it says.
Flight data available to the website shows that the plane was on autopilot at an altitude of about seven miles when it was about to descend and land at Addis Ababa Bole International Airport.
Air traffic control tried several times to reach the crew of the aircraft – without success. Apparently the pilots slept too hard. Only when the machine flew over the area of the runway was an alarm triggered, which finally woke up the flight captains.
It is not known what scenes then took place in the cockpit. Air traffic control data shows that after the wake-up call, the plane descended and landed safely about 25 minutes later than planned.
“We received a report stating that [der] Flight ET343 en route from Khartoum to Addis Ababa temporarily lost communication with air traffic control in Addis Ababa on Aug. 15, 2022,” Ethiopian Airlines said in a statement on Friday. “The flight later landed safely after communications were restored.”
The crew involved has been withdrawn from flight operations pending the completion of the investigation into the case. “Appropriate corrective action will be taken based on the outcome of the investigation. Safety has been and will continue to be our top priority,” the statement said.
As recently as April, pilots at American airlines Southwest and Delta Airlines warned executives that fatigue and exhaustion among pilots were increasing and had become the biggest safety risk.