Word: flighting
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...February 2008, a Go! Airlines flight from Honolulu overshot the airport in Hilo, Hawaii, and continued for some 30 miles over the Pacific Ocean before circling back. The captain originally said they had entered the wrong air-traffic-control frequency, but both pilots later admitted they had fallen asleep. A contributing factor to the incident, according to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), was the captain's undiagnosed sleep apnea, which authorities call a growing cause of transportation accidents...
Several major transportation accidents involving fatigue have been linked to sleep apnea, including a bus accident in Utah last year that killed nine. Just one day before the Northwest flight drifted off course, the NTSB released a warning letter to mariners, truck drivers and others urging them to be screened for the condition. Sleep apnea "substantially increases the likelihood of both critical errors and of actually falling asleep while driving," the NTSB warned...
Even without a sleep disorder, experts say there are many reasons why one or both of the Northwest pilots might have nodded off. Bill Voss, president of the Flight Safety Foundation, a nonprofit group working to lower aviation accidents, says modern aircraft give flight crews very little to do during the straight-and-level portions of flight. "The aircraft is on autopilot, the flight plan's programmed in, one pilot says hello and goodbye to a controller every 10 to 15 minutes, and there's not a lot else going on," says Voss, who added that the crew's claim...
Pilot fatigue has become an issue of growing concern among safety advocates, especially since the February crash of a Continental Connection flight near Buffalo, N.Y., that killed all 49 onboard and one person on the ground. One of the two pilots is believed to have been awake all night before the flight and the other was known to occasionally sleep in the crew lounge at Newark Liberty Airport. The FAA is expected to release new regulations on pilot work limits next year. "I don't think many regular company employees would be able to work 16 hours a day, five...
...past week, France and Britain have tried to take a more aggressive approach by forcibly deporting asylum seekers. At midnight on Oct. 20, a flight chartered by French and British immigration officials left Paris for Kabul, carrying 27 Afghans - 24 of whom had been deported from Britain and three from France. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, who visited Kabul last week, told reporters on Wednesday that "the situation of each Afghan migrant is examined individually." He added that the deportations had been conducted in accordance with international refugee conventions, and that the Afghan government had approved the flight plan...