Two pilots fall asleep as flight misses landing in Addis Ababa
Darpan News Desk IANS, 19 Aug, 2022 12:49 PM
Addis Ababa, Aug 19 (IANS) Two pilots are believed to have fallen asleep and missed their landing during a flight from Sudan to Ethiopia, media reports said.
The incident took place onboard an Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737-800 enroute from Khartoum to Addis Ababa, according to a report by commercial aviation news site Aviation Herald, CNN reported.
Data obtained by the website indicates that the aircraft was cruising at 37,000 feet on autopilot when it failed to descend at Addis Ababa Bole International Airport, its scheduled destination, on August 15.
Air traffic control were apparently unable to reach the crew despite making several attempts at contact. However, an alarm was triggered when the plane overshot the runway and continued along the route, CNN reported.
The aircraft subsequently began to descend, landing safely around 25 minutes later.
Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) data shows the aircraft overflying the runway, before beginning its descent and maneuvering for another approach.
Aviation analyst Alex Macheras has since taken to Twitter to express his shock at the "deeply concerning incident," which he suggests may have been the result of pilot exhaustion.
"Pilot fatigue is nothing new, and continues to pose one of the most significant threats to air safety -- internationally," he tweeted on Thursday.
The report comes just months after pilots at Southwest Airlines and Delta Air Lines warned airline executives that pilot exhaustion was on the rise and urged them to treat fatigue and the resulting mistakes as a safety risk.
"Fatigue, both acute and cumulative, has become Southwest Airlines' number-one safety threat," the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, or SWAPA, told airline executives in a letter back in April, CNN reported.
Addressing the media outside 10, Downing Street, the 58-year-old embattled British leader, who has faced controversies galore in his 1,079 days in power, said: "It is clearly now the will of the parliamentary Conservative Party that there should be a new leader of the party and therefore a new Prime Minister."
According to state broadcaster NHK, the incident took place at around 11. 30 a.m. (local time) near the Yamatosaidaiji Station in Nara city while the 67-year-old former leader was making a speech for a Liberal Democratic Party candidate's election campaign.
Six people were killed and more than two dozen injured when shots rang out in the middle of a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Ill. Video clips posted to social media showed the festivities collapsing into panic as revellers realized they were under fire and scrambled for cover.
Five people have been shot dead, as per city officials, in the parade in Highland Park, north of Chicago, which was suddenly halted about 10 minutes after it began as gunshots were heard.
At 5.48 p.m., a 22-year-old Danish man in possession of a rifle and ammunition was arrested outside the shopping mall. The motive for the shooting remains unknown and the suspect will face questioning by a judge on Monday. On Sunday night, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said Denmark had suffered a cruel attack.
US attorneys said the defendants illicitly prescribed over 13 million pills and made false claims to illegally collect over $20 million from Medicare, over $17 million from Medicaid and over $15 million from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, from 2013 to 2018.
