MANGALORE REVISITED

It is a tragedy; I recognise that but to an investigator there is a touch of the bizarre about the latest news article on the Mangalore runway overrun accident in May this year (http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2010-11-18-airindia18_ST_N.htm) which asserts that the cockpit voice recorder included the sound of loud snoring, apparently from the captain. The report extrapolates this to imply that the captain was woken only shortly before the accident and was therefore suffering from 'sleep inertia' during the approach and landing. It was a modern aircraft and the CVR would probably have retained at least the 120 minutes preceding the accident, so it doesn't necessarily add up, (I and many other pilots have been asleep less than 2 hours before successfully landing an aircraft) but if he had been asleep for long enough to enter the deeper stages of sleep and was woken only perhaps at top of descent by a less than assertive first officer, sleep inertia is certainly a potential factor. This accident appears to be primarily about situational awareness and decision making by the captain (and secondarily assertiveness and decision making by the F/O), and sleep inertia can certainly affect those cognitive functions.