Indonesia’s aviation safety agency called for better pilot fatigue monitoring mechanisms after an investigation revealed that two pilots on a commercial flight recently fell asleep mid-flight.
On January 25, A pilot and co-pilot fell asleep simultaneously for about 28 minutes during a Batik Air flight from Sulawesi.in the north of the country, to the capital Jakarta, according to a preliminary report by the National Transportation Safety Committee (KNKT).
The report, which AFP learned about on Friday, was published on the agency’s website at the end of February.
Indonesia is a vast archipelago with a poor air safety record, despite relying heavily on this transport to connect its thousands of islands.
According to the report, one of the pilots had not rested properly the night before the flight.
The incident caused a series of navigation errors, but all 153 passengers and four flight attendants on the Airbus A320 were unharmed during the two-hour, 35-minute journey.
Half an hour after takeoff, the captain asked permission to rest from the copilot, who took over the controls of the device but also ended up falling asleep, according to the report.
Twenty-eight minutes after the last recorded transmission, the pilot woke up, realized that his co-pilot was asleep and that the plane was not following the correct flight path, and corrected it after waking his co-pilot and responding to calls. from Jakarta.
KNKT urged Batik Air to create detailed procedures to ensure that pilots and crew are properly rested before their flights.
Source: Ambito
