[Image: PXHere]
A report on a 2024 incident has revealed that a Lufthansa flight with 205 people on board went without a pilot for 10 minutes after the copilot fainted while he was alone in the cockpit.
The captain had briefly left the cockpit to use the lavatory when the copilot fainted during a flight from Frankfurt to Seville, Spain, on February 17, 2024, according to the CIAIAC report.
A total of 199 passengers and six crew members were aboard the Airbus A321 at the time, however, the aeroplane continued to fly “in a stable manner” due to the autopilot being active.
The copilot’s “sudden and severe incapacitation” was recorded on the voice recorder during this time, An air-traffic controller also attempted to reach the copilot three times, but there was no response.
The captain eventually returned from the bathroom and tried to open the cockpit door with a regular opening code, which chimes the cockpit. The captain tried the procedure five times, and a cockpit crew member also placed an intercom call to the flight deck. With no response, the captain finally used an emergency code to gain access and took control of the plane.
The copilot received first aid from the crew and a doctor, who was travelling as a passenger, the report said, but the captain decided to divert the flight to Madrid’s Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas airport, where he landed approximately 20 minutes later. Once in Madrid, the copilot was transferred to a hospital where he stayed for a few hours.
The investigation found that the copilot had a pre-existing neurological condition that he did not know about and that had not been picked up during standard medical examinations, but unfortunately for the poor pilot, his medical certificate has now been suspended.
While the idea of nobody at the controls of a passenger jet is terrifying, it gets even worse. The authority responsible for the report says that pilots are trained for these type of incidents, and although rare, in-flight incapacitations – including the sudden death of pilots – do happen from time to time.
CIAIAC identified 287 in-flight “incapacitation incidents” in a database of transportation reports managed by the European Commission during the 2019-2024 period. In a 2004 report, the US Federal Aviation Administration identified 39 in-flight incapacitations among American airline pilots between 1993 to 1998.
[Source: CNN]
