Taken from El Comercio
The two pilots of an Ethiopian Airlines passenger plane fell asleep as the aircraft approached an airport in Ethiopia , causing them to overfly the runway before an autopilot alarm woke them up.
The incident occurred earlier this week when Ethiopian Airlines Flight 343, a Boeing 737-800, was flying from Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, to Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, according to a report by The Aviation Herald.
The Boeing 737 was flying at an altitude of 37,000 feet (11,277 meters) when the pilots fell asleep in the cockpit, causing the plane to approach Addis Ababa Boke International Airport without descending.
Air traffic control “attempted to contact the crew on numerous occasions without success,” according to The Aviation Herald. After hovering over the runway at 37,000 feet, the autopilot disengaged and an alarm sounded, waking the pilots.
The plane returned to the airport and landed without incident about 25 minutes later.
Last April, the pilots of an ITA Airways flight from New York to Rome fell asleep. For more than 10 minutes, while flying over French airspace, air traffic controllers were unable to contact them, triggering a terrorism alert amid fears that the aircraft might have been hijacked.
The captain was dismissed after it was determined that he behaved inappropriately.
