Subhechcha Ganguly 
After falling asleep, the autopilot system activated, allowing the plane to stay on course until it disconnected a few minutes before landing. Air Traffic Controllers at Addis Ababa’s Bole International Airport noticed unusual flight activity and attempted unsuccessfully to contact the pilots. The pilots’ mid-flight nap was interrupted when the plane flew over the intended runaway and the alarms that followed the autopilot system’s disconnection. Radar shows the pair, who are most likely terrified at this point, turning around and attempting a second landing attempt. According to the Aviation Herald, data confirmed that the plane stayed at 37,000 feet as it flew straight over the airport.’Deeply concerning incident at Africa’s largest airline,’ tweeted aviation analyst Alex Macheras.Hopefully, both pilots were fired, and the aviation authorities began an investigation into this airline’s crew duty schedules and other practises! ‘Thank God nothing bad happened,’ one user wrote.Others called the incident’mad,’ ‘unprofessional, and dangerous,’ but others were more sympathetic, suggesting the pilots were ‘overworked.’A similar incident occurred earlier this month, when two pilots fell asleep while flying from New York to Rome.Pilot associations have compared the aviation industry’s inability to understand pilot fatigue to “giving the keys to a drunk driver.”
By Subhechcha Ganguly
