One pilot who works for another large UK airline, but who did not want to be named, told the BBC that, about three months ago, both he and his co-pilot had very little sleep during their rest period.
On the subsequent flight, his co-pilot asked if he could take a nap, which the pilot approved. But then the pilot fell asleep too - for about 10 minutes. Continue reading the main story “ Start Quote The problem with fatigue is that it slows your reactions down” Dave Smith Balpa “When I woke up, it was a big adrenaline rush.
The first thing you do obviously is check your height and your speeds and all of your instrumentation,” he said. “The worst scenario is that the autopilot would disconnect itself and then the aircraft would lose or gain height and that would be extremely dangerous as you’d go into the path of oncoming aircraft. “Now there are warning systems that tell you you are deviating from the correct altitude but they are not excessively loud - it would be easy enough to sleep through that, and I probably don’t need to tell you what the consequences of that are.”
SCARY!
(Source: BBC)
