For nervous passengers who stiffen the moment an airplane begins to move forward and do not relax until the grab-your-carry-ons chime has sounded, it must be hard to imagine that pilots could actually fall asleep while flying. No pilot would like to admit to doing so. Nevertheless, there have been instances of airline crews overshooting their destinations or becoming unresponsive for long periods, creating a strong presumption of somnolence or at least of profound stupor. Of course, they deny it. Some instances of controlled flight into terrain by general aviation aircraft similarly seem to suggest a pilot who has fallen asleep, although it is impossible to know for certain.
In the September issue of Flying, Sam Weigel described an accident that befell a pilot hauling cargo up California’s Owens Valley. The pilot’s Piper Lance flew straight into a mountaintop in broad daylight. When flying the same route earlier with Weigel himself, this pilot had on two occasions dozed off near the very area where the crash occurred. Circumstantial evidence that the same thing happened again was strong, but the National Transportation Safety Board avoided drawing any firm conclusion.
