Pilots Fell Asleep During Approach To DIA - DIA is the Denver International Airport. On March 4, 2004, both the pilot and the co-pilot fell asleep, apparently unaware the other had done so. The pilot was on his third red-eye flight in a row (of 7 hours and 55 minutes each), the last two of which only had something like a half hour layover in the middle. The plane crossed into the DIA airspace doing Mach 0.82! That's approximately 512.7 knots, when they were only supposed to be doing 250 knots. About 5 miles past the intersection, the pilot woke up and heard frantic calls being made from Air Traffic Control. The pilot says he still doesn't know why he woke up. It's a good thing he did though. NASA didn't want to release its survey with the incident in it because "it could make the public unnecessarily afraid to fly." I think the word unnecessarily needs to be taken out of that statement. Here's another reason:

Underfueled Planes - In April of this year, the following recorded conversation occurred between a commercial airline pilot and air traffic control in New York airspace.

Pilot: "We are minimum fuel, sir."

Air traffic controller: "You're declaring an emergency at this time. The time is now 22:57. I need the souls on board and fuel in pounds when you arrive."

Pilot: "Copy that. One hundred fifty-seven souls on board. We have exactly 38 minutes of fuel remaining."

That is way too scary a set of words for me.

Within a six month period this year 10 flights had to declare the emergency fuel situation at the Newark Liberty International Airport - meaning they needed to land immediately or they risked running out of gas. 10 flights in 6 months at one airport, so just how many are occurring across the nation?

And why is this happening? Because airlines are cutting costs by reducing the amount of fuel carried on the airplanes. Less fuel means less weight. Less weight means less fuel needed to make a given trip. But that's a tricky loop of calculations to make. Especially when airlines force pilots to cut so far as to go into the safety fuel reserve.

Air traffic controller Ray Adams adds, "When aircraft come into our airport at Newark with a minimum fuel state, they become a priority for us and it's an extra focus of attention on that aircraft, which increases the complexity of your already complex operation." So not only is the one plane in danger if it can't land, making the airspace clear for it to land is stressful and potentially endangers other aircrafts!

I would, however, fly with Bruce Meyer as my pilot, who is quoted as saying:
"I had to use different ruses to make the paperwork or hide the fact that I was putting fuel on board, but my responsibility as captain is to my passengers, my aircraft, my crew and to the safety of that flight." Damn straight. Saving money is not an acceptable reason to be putting people in danger. He did the right thing, and shouldn't have had to defend himself against his employing airline for doing so.

Too bad he's retired now. I hope it wasn't because the airline forced him to retire over this.