More than half of Britain’s airline pilots have fallen asleep in the cockpit and a third have woken up to find their co-pilot asleep, according to a new survey.
The poll of 500 pilots commissioned by the British Airline Pilots’ Association (BALPA) also found that 43 percent believed tiredness had compromised their ability to fly a plane at least once a month for the last six months.
Some 56 percent admitted they had fallen asleep during a flight and 29 percent said they had woken up to find the other pilot had also dozed off, according to the ComRes poll.
The survey comes after it emerged that both the captain and co-pilot of an Airbus A330 plane fell asleep at the same time while it was on autopilot during a flight by an unnamed British operator on August 13.
The Civil Aviation Authority said one of the pilots had reported that the pair had only five hours’ sleep each for the previous two nights.
