[Anonymous]

[JohnnyA]

Amusing and slightly worrying news from Sweden – a pilot for SAS apparently “lost the battle to stay awake” during a flight, and his co-pilot ended up locked out of the cockpit because he’d gone to the toilet!

http://www.thelocal.se/31810/20110203/

[LuganoPirate]

The really worrying thing is, what if the pilot had passed out, or had a heart attack. It’s not unknown.

Toilet breaks are needed and what should happen is a member of the cabin crew should step into the cockpit. Then in an emergency they would be able to open the door.

Clearly this did not happen!

[CallMeIshmael]

There is also a safeguard whereby if a pilot is having controlled rest, prior to which issues a DND to the cabin crew, then the other pilot falls asleep, the controls ring an alarm if they have not been touched for 30 mins.

[flyingbunny]

30 minutes seems quite along time on such a short flight…

[LuganoPirate]

I don’t believe a controlled rest means “sleeping at the wheel” but rather a rest on a routine flight, usually medium to long haul. It’s during this time a pilot will stretch his legs, use the restroom or have a coffee. It would not be allowed on a short haul though toilet breaks are permitted provided a cabin crew member is in the cockpit. Drinks would be taken in the cockpit.

On long haul flights of 8 hours+ there are 2 cockpit crews and at the start of the flight they will often occupy the jump seats.

[CallMeIshmael]

My post was primarily designed to demonstrate that there safeguards.

Although taken from an individual’s site it is representative of airlines

http://www.andytracy.net/rest.htm

[LuganoPirate]

Point taken, though it does say “CR is an exceptional strategy”. This is definitely banned by the FAA though.

[Author]

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