Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
I'm not sure if I'm more afraid or less afraid to fly now, after reading all about an Air India Jaipur-Mubai flight where the pilot and co-pilot fell asleep in the cockpit, causing the plane to keep on flying past its destination point.
On the one hand it's disturbing to know that pilots have to fly beyond their limits. It's scary to think that so many lives can be in the hands of people too tired to be able to ensure their safety but I'm not sure the blame lands only on the pilots' shoulders.
It's easy enough to express shock and claim to be appalled that something like this can happen but it seems from the reports that overly tired pilots aren't that rare to find.
Just last February two 'go!' airline pilots fell asleep on their way from Honolulu to Hilo and flew past their destination 18 minutes before waking up and turning back to land safely.
On the other hand it's good to know that a plane can keep going relatively safely even though there is no one actually keeping an eye on the instruments.
Luckily all was well with the Air India flight too but it could so easily have turned into a disaster. It seems that all possible attempts were made to contact the pilots but only one succeeded in waking them up. And, ironically, it was the one technology that is now mostly obsolete in most modern day airports - SELCAL (selective calling), which uses a light and buzzer to indicate that air traffic control is trying to get in contact.
It seems that someone on that plane is destined for great things and it therefore wasn't their time to die. Had the plane got much further, the SELCAL system would have been out of range and who knows what could have happened.
I guess all that really matters now is that they learn from what happened and put into place measures to avoid it ever happening again. Maybe a system whereby traffic control can get in touch with the cabin as well as the cockpit would be worth thinking about ... Either that, or set an electric shock into the pilot's seat that can be triggered from air traffic control.
