You snooze, you lose … control of the plane!

JAKARTA: An Indonesian passenger plane carrying 159 people strayed off course after both pilots fell asleep at the controls, with increasingly desperate attempts by air traffic controllers to rouse them going unheeded.

One of the pilots had apparently had his sleep disturbed several times the night before, waking repeatedly to help his wife take care of their twin onemonth-old babies, after the couple had moved house that day, the Indonesian National Transportation Safety Committee (KNKT) discovered.

No one was injured on the Batik Air flight, on January 25, from the island of Sulawesi to the Indonesian capital Jakarta, but the incident again draws attention to the poor safety record of airlines in Indonesia, a vast nation of scattered islands connected by private airlines.

The KNKT report noted: “During flight preparation, the co-pilot informed the pilot that he had not been getting enough sleep. The pilot in command then offered his deputy to take a short nap during the flight to Kendari.”

But when the co-pilot took control of the plane to allow the pilot to have a nap, he nodded off again.

By the time the Airbus 320 was passing above Java, about 90 minutes into the flight, both men were fast asleep, oblivious to the attempts to hail them by air traffic controllers.

After 28 minutes the pilot woke up and realised the plane had strayed slightly off course. He roused his co-pilot and reported falsely that they had experienced a radio failure.

The pilot and co-pilot, who have not been named by the airline, both tested negative for alcohol consumption before the flight took off.