While a British passenger plane was on autopilot both of the plane's pilots fell asleep at the controls, according to an incident report released to the U.K. media on Thursday, according to CBS News.
The two pilots had been taking turns napping in the cockpit, a practice that is allowed, because they had only gotten five hours of sleep over the previous two nights "due to longer duty period with insufficient opportunity to sleep," according to CNN.
The Airbus A330 carrying 300 passengers landed at its destination safely with none of the passengers aware that anything had gone awry. The report did not identify which airline the flight was from although sources have told CNN that the airline in question was Virgin Atlantic.
A spokesman from the U.K.'s Civil Aviation Authority said that they take reports such as this one incredibly seriously.
"Safety is the CAA's number one priority. We take fatigue related incidents extremely seriously and will address detailed questions to individual airlines when problems emerge," the statement said. "The U.K. has an excellent safety record, but we are constantly striving to improve air safety and strongly encourage anyone in the aviation industry, especially pilots, to use our completely confidential reporting procedure to tell us of any concerns they may have."
Jim McAuslan, the general secretary of the British Airline Pilots Association, was not surprised that the incident occurred considering the hours that pilots have to work, according to CBS News.
"British pilots want to make every flight a safe flight and tiredness is the biggest challenge they face," McAuslan said in a statement. "As the regulator responsible for U.K. flight safety the CAA has been far too complacent about the levels of tiredness among British pilots and failing to acknowledge the scale of the underreported problem."
A report released by BALPA that surveyed 500 commercial pilots showed that 56 percent of pilots have fallen asleep in the cabin. More troubling is that one third of those who had fallen asleep say that they have woken up to find that their co-pilot was also sleeping, according to Reuters.
