A sleepy Air Canada pilot, who mistakenly believed his jet was about to crash into a US military plane, forced a sudden dive that caused 16 injuries among passengers and crew on a transatlantic flight.
A Transportation Safety Board report describes the 46 seconds in which the plane dived and lurched back up during an overnight Air Canada flight from Toronto to Zurich in January 2011. Those hurt weren’t wearing seatbelts, the report said.
According to the report, the plane’s first officer was napping during a rest period aimed at combating pilot fatigue when the captain’s report on their position woke him. At the same time a US Air Force plane was approaching about 300m below.
That set off cockpit alerts, which the captain mentioned to the first officer.
The “confused and disoriented” co-pilot at first mistook the planet Venus for the approaching plane, the report said. When he did spot it, he thought it was coming straight at them. He overrode the auto-pilot by forcefully pressing on the control column, pushing the jet into a dive. Fourteen passengers and two flight attendants among the 103 mostly sleeping people slammed into parts of the plane, suffering cuts and bruises.
The captain regained control as the US military plane passed by safely and returned the plane to its cruising altitude. “This underscores the challenge of managing fatigue on the flight deck,” Jon Lee, the investigator in charge, said.
Seven of the injured were treated in hospital on arrival in Zurich three hours later. The investigation found that the first officer, who had been asleep for about 75 minutes, was suffering “sleep inertia” magnified by fatigue.
The report said flight crews were not following standard procedures for “strategic napping”. – Sapa-AP