Coronavirus pandemic and pilot errors

Civil aviation pilots have become more likely to make mistakes in the air. Dozens of incidents have been recorded around the world in recent months.

Bloomberg, citing employees of the companies, reports on the reason for the massive phenomenon: a long break in work associated with the pandemic did not have the best effect on the skill of the pilots – they make more and more mistakes. And there are plenty of examples of this.

For example, a pilot of an American airline, who started work after a long downtime due to coronavirus, forgot to start the second engine for takeoff. If he had not interrupted the flight, having noticed a dangerous oversight in time, everything could have ended in disaster.

Another case occurred in the United States with a pilot who was idle for a long 7 months. Getting to work, on one of the flights, he forgot to release the landing gear during landing. Realizing this, he went on a go-around, while being 240 meters from the runway. A much more unusual incident occurred with the captain of an aircraft flying … in the wrong direction.

According to Bloomberg, these are far from all incidents privately reported by pilots in a narrow-profile database designed to identify security threats. At the same time, all the crews announced a shortage of flights during the pandemic, which was the reason for what happened. Uwe Harter, a pilot for Deutsche Lufthansa AG who has been on emergency leave since last February, says:

“This is a really critical situation. The last thing the industry needs right now is an accident.”

The pilot notes that in some airlines, pilots undergo appropriate retraining, but most – “the very minimum” or nothing at all. The agency recalls that due to the pandemic, the aviation industry lost $ 138 billion last year, and another 52 billion losses are expected in 2021.

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