Is pilot fatigue a menace to airline safety?
By Patrick Smith Apr. 17, 2009 | This is your captain sleeping … er, speaking. Sorry, it’s been a long day. Passengers won’t be happy to hear about it, but crew fatigue has long been a serious issue. In February 2008, both pilots of a Go Airlines regional jet fell asleep over Hawaii, missing nearly a dozen air traffic control radio calls and overshooting their destination by 15 miles. Last June, the same thing happened on board an Air India jet headed from Jaipur to Mumbai. The plane continued past Mumbai for more than 300 miles before the crew finally woke up. The National Transportation Safety Board has cited fatigue as a contributing cause in several accidents, including the 1999 crash of American Airlines Flight 1420, at Little Rock, Ark. The MD-80 slid off a runway during a thunderstorm, killing 11 people, including the captain, who’d been on duty for more than 13 hours. At least two crashes involving cargo jets — one at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, the other in Kansas City — have be
