Viral: Both pilots fall asleep at 37,000 feet for 25 minutes, miss runaway for landing

Two Ethiopian Airlines pilots fell asleep while flying a flight from Sudan's Khartoum to Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa and missed their landing. While the pilots fell asleep, Air Traffic Control tried to contact the plane’s crew, but the Boeing 737’s aircraft’s autopilot system kept it cruising at 37,000ft. The pilots woke up when the disconnect wailer rang loudly after being disconnected from the autopilot once the plane flew over the runway where it was supposed to land. The pilots landed the plane 25 minutes later. The plane stayed on the runway for around two and a half hours before it departed for its next flight.

This incident took place on Monday, fortunately, the pilots managed a successful landing of the aircraft without reporting any injuries, according to Aviation Herald, which added that the Air Traffic Control (ATC) raised an alert when flight ET343 approached the airport.

Aviation analyst Alex Macheras also posted about the event on Twitter, calling it "deeply concerning". He also blamed pilot fatigue for it.

He said, pilot fatigue is nothing new and continues to pose one of the most significant threats to air safety- internationally. Just last week, pilots publicly criticised UK leisure airline Jet2 for “refusing to recognise concerns about pilot fatigue.” ”

Aviation analyst Alex Macheras wrote on Twitter: 'Deeply concerning the incident at Africa's largest airline — Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 #ET343 was still at cruising altitude of 37,000ft by the time it reached destination Addis Ababa.

Why hadn't it started to descend for landing? Both pilots were asleep.