In recent times, the emergence of social networks and the Internet have allowed some unusual events that occur in a specific point on the globe to become known on the other side of the world. This is the case of what happened in Indonesia, where it has been known that two pilots of a commercial flight fell asleep in the middle of the flight without anything happening.
What could have been a real tragedy has remained a simple anecdote, but the investigation is already underway. As has been learned in recent hours, the aviation safety agency requested better mechanisms to control pilot fatigue, after an investigation revealed that these two pilots had fallen asleep in mid-flight.
The events occurred on January 25, when a pilot and his co-pilot fell asleep at the same time for about 28 minutes, in the middle of a Batik Air company flight. The aircraft was then traveling from Sulawesi, in the north of the country, to the capital, Jakarta, according to a preliminary report by the National Transportation Safety Committee (KNKT).
According to the report, shared by the AFP agency, one of the pilots did not rest adequately the night before the flight. The incident caused a series of navigation errors, but the 153 passengers and four flight attendants on the Airbus A320 were unharmed during the journey, which lasted two hours and 35 minutes. Apparently, half an hour after takeoff, the captain asked permission to rest from the copilot, who took over the controls of the device, but he also ended up falling asleep, according to the aforementioned report.
Twenty-eight minutes after the last recorded transmission, the pilot woke up, realizing that his co-pilot was asleep. Seeing that the plane was not following the correct flight path, he corrected it and woke up his companion. On the other hand, KNKT has now urged Batik Air to create detailed procedures to ensure that pilots and crew are properly rested before their flights.
Batik Air Indonesia’s operational manual covers the health and medical fitness of pilots, including “a personal checklist” to identify any “factors that may affect human performance.” Despite this, the KNKT claims that “the investigation did not find any detailed guidelines or procedures for pilots when using the personal checklist, such as the evaluation guide for each disability category.” Be that as it may, everything finally ended in a scare. Both drivers have been suspended.