The pilot of a passenger jet fainted mid flight in the cockpit over Europe, triggering an emergency, before admitting he had not slept the night before take-off.
The incident occurred on a flight of the Romanian airline Tarom, during a return trip back to the country from the Netherlands.
According the Civil Aviation Safety Investigation and Analysis Authority (AIAS), the aircraft departed from Otopeni Airport at 6am as scheduled, en route to Amsterdam.
But already during the outbound flight, the co-pilot reported experiencing health problems.
Prior to the return flight, he said that he felt capable of returning to the cockpit, although he indicated – as a precaution – that he would not take the controls himself.
Some 50 minutes after take-off, the 57-year-old became sick, and even fainted as the plane flew over Europe.
The other pilot declared a state of emergency and requested medical assistance immediately after landing in the Romanian capital.
Once the aircraft landed, the 87 passengers on board were escorted out through its rear door, and ambulance workers immediately intervened on the runway to administer first aid.
The co-pilot boarded the return flight having not slept the previous night, according to the findings of the AIAS report.
Following the incident, the employee will only be allowed to perform flights in the presence of an additional captain, for the time being.
He will also no longer be assigned to night flights or flights lasting longer than two hours.
As a third measure, he will no longer be scheduled to work with the other pilot.
This is not the first time a pilot has fallen asleep while controlling an aircraft.
A Batik Air plane in Indonesia went off track on its flight path after both the pilot and the co-pilot fell asleep for nearly half an hour in 2024.
The incident, which occurred in January, saw the pair in the cockpit getting some shuteye, as the aircraft drifted off it’s planned path – something that could have led to a fatal disaster for all 153 passengers on board.
It is vital for pilots to keep an aircraft on the right flight path as it is carefully mapped out by air traffic controllers to ensure the plane doesn’t cross any other aircraft’s paths.
The plane was flying from South East Sulawesi to the capital Jakarta.
In a similar situation, one of the pilots had not rested adequately the night before the flight.
About half an hour after the plane took off, the captain asked permission from his second-in-command to rest for a while and he said yes.
The co-pilot took over command of the aircraft but then fell asleep himself.
A few minutes after the last recorded transmission by the co-pilot, the area control centre in Jakarta tried to contact the aircraft.
It received no answer.
Twenty-eight minutes after the last recorded transmission, the pilot woke up and realised his co-pilot was asleep and that the aircraft was not on the correct flight path.
He immediately woke his colleague up, responded to the calls from Jakarta and corrected the flight path.
The incident resulted in a series of navigation errors, but the Airbus A320’s 153 passengers and four flight attendants were unharmed during the two-hour-and-35-minute flight.
At the time, the transport ministry released a statement saying it ‘strongly reprimands’ Batik Air over the incident.
Air transport director-general M. Kristi Endah Murni called on airlines to pay more attention to their air crew’s rest time, before launching an investigation.
