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WASHINGTON—Federal
investigators are examining pilot fatigue as a cause for
airline accidents in a hearing that revealed a Mesa Air
Group Inc. flight flew 15 miles beyond its Hawaii
destination after the cockpit crew fell asleep.
The Mesa
pilots on the February 13 flight, who didn’t respond to
controllers for 18 minutes, were on their third day of
repeated early start times and “demanding sequences of
numerous short flight segments,” Jana Price, an analyst
for the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB),
said Tuesday in
Washington.
“It’s an
insidious issue,” NTSB chairman Mark Rosenker said.
“Many times the pilots themselves don’t even recognize
that they are fatigued when they get into that cockpit.”
The
board, which investigates accidents including those
involving airlines, has had pilot fatigue on its “most
wanted” list of safety improvements since 1990. The NTSB
is trying to highlight the issue again as record fuel
prices increase pressure on carriers to cut costs.
Fatigue
probably led to a Pinnacle Airlines Corp. runway overrun
on April 12, 2007, in Traverse City, Michigan, the NTSB
concluded. The 52 passengers and crew members weren’t
injured in the accident, at the end of a 14-hour duty
day by the pilots.
The Mesa
Go! flight from Honolulu, with 43 passengers and crew
members, landed safely after the plane reversed course.
The flight had been cruising at 21,000 feet when the
pilots became unresponsive to controllers, according to
the board, which is still investigating the incident.
Brian
Gillman, general counsel for Phoenix-based Mesa, didn’t
immediately respond to telephone calls seeking comment.
The
Pinnacle overrun “was the result of a series of actions
and events involving multiple parties and rapidly
changing weather conditions in an extremely short time,”
said Joe Williams, a spokesman for the Memphis,
Tennessee-based airline. “We apologize for any impact on
our customers.”
A
Shuttle America Corp. flight overran a snowy runway in
Cleveland on February 18, 2007. The NTSB later found the
captain had insomnia, and he reported he had been awake
31 of the previous 32 hours, Price said. The 74
passengers and crewmembers weren’t hurt in the overrun
by the Republic Airways Holdings Inc. unit.
The
board also cited a Corporate Airlines flight that
crashed on October 19, 2004, killing 13 people, after
the pilots didn’t follow procedures and flew the plane
too low into trees. Fatigue probably contributed to the
accident in Kirksville, Missouri, the NTSB found.
The NTSB
said the Federal Aviation Administration, which
regulates airlines, should take steps such as
continually assessing the effectiveness of carriers’
efforts to reduce pilot fatigue. (Bloomberg) |
