In Russia, an air traffic controller fell asleep at the controls and lost an IL-76. He managed to break 17 rules while sleeping, Baza reports.
It is reported that the IL-76 transport plane was flying to the Tver region on the afternoon of February 16. Flying over the Volgograd region, the crew tried to contact the dispatcher Mamonov, but he answered only the second time. The pilots informed him of the echelon they were flying on and calmly continued their flight.
“Mamonov didn’t answer right away because he was very busy – he was napping, leaning on his arm. The dispatcher had just started his shift, worked for 25 minutes and decided to rest. In his dreams, he tied a flight plan for another flight of a similar aircraft flying from Akhtubinsk to Lipetsk to the IL-76. And he continued to dream. According to the erroneous plan, the IL-76 was supposed to turn left in 15 minutes, but flew the other way. There was a warning about the deviation from the route, but the dispatcher overslept,” the report says.
At the scheduled time, the plane did not land in Lipetsk – other controllers noticed this. They tried to find out from Mamonov why the plane didn’t land, but he just said: “I don’t know, I’ll ask him.”
Finally waking up, the dispatcher tried to contact the crew, but he was addressing the wrong side.
“I called all the radio stations, but no one answered. Panicked, Mamonov told the flight director that the IL-76 was not responding and was flying to the wrong destination. When they managed to call the right crew, it turned out that they were flying according to plan and Mamonov had confused everything. An internal investigation into the incident showed that Mamonov had violated 17 requirements of the governing documents. The main violation, of course, was sleeping at the workplace,” Baza writes.
