batik air tripadvisor
Picture courtesy (batik air-trip advisor) pilot take a wrong while asleep.
Sibusiso Zulu
In an event that was life-threatening for passengers and reputation-tarnishing for the business, a pilot and his co-pilot have been reported to have fallen asleep mid-air, carrying 153 passengers on a flight that subsequently veered off-course.
Reports suggest that 2 Batik Air pilots (aged 32 and 28 years old) had just taken off in Sulawasi to Jakarta on 25 January when the main pilot asked the co-pilot to take full control of the Airbus A320 as he complained about being deprived of sleep and wanted to rest for a short while. Having taken control of the aircraft, the co-pilot also fell asleep, who himself has not been getting enough sleep because he has been allegedly helping his wife with their one-month-old twin babies.
Air-control in Jakarta made numerous attempts to make contact with the cockpit en route to the capital, but received no response for 28 minutes. Eventually the main pilot woke up to a flight heading in the wrong direction with the co-pilot also asleep.
The incident report from the National Transportation Safety Committee (N.T.S.C) states “the Pilot In Command (P.I.C) saw the Second In Command (S.I.C) was sleeping and woke him up. At about the same time, the P.I.C responded to the call from another pilot at the Jarkata air control”.
In 2019, BBC Indonesia reported that the same airline was forced to make an emergency landing after a pilot fainted. Eventually, the flight landed safely at its destination with no casualties reported, and the pilots were suspended from their duties following remarks from the authorities who “strongly reprimanded” Batik Air about the incident. Indonesia’s head of air transport, M Kristi Endah Murni, said Batik Air should pay more attention to its crew’s rest time.
The N.T.S.C report also suggest that medical tests were done on the pilots and the results confirmed that the pilots were fit to fly, however the results do not prove that the pilots were sleep deprived prior to the incident
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