Qantas pilots sometimes make fatal mistakes during a pandemic break

Enlarge image

Qantas machines in Sydney (archive image)

Photo: Rob Griffith / AP

The corona pandemic has fatal consequences for some industries to this day, including air traffic.

Operations fell sharply during the pandemic - some pilots wait months for their next mission.

Australian media are now reporting on an internal investigation by the airline Qantas, which reveals that pilots sometimes make fatal errors after long breaks in flights.

As the newspapers "Sydney Morning Herald" and "Melbourne's Age" reported, it happened, among other things, that pilots forgot to release the parking brakes during take-off and upset the altitude and speed of the aircraft.

It also happened that switches in the cockpit were in the wrong position and external inspections of the machine before take-off were not concentrated.

Routine tasks that had previously been done with minimal effort now sometimes require more time and thereby impaired attention, the internal letter warned.

The sometimes long breaks for the pilots due to the corona pandemic led to less up-to-date flight experience and thus to a reduced cognitive ability of the staff, according to the report.

A spokeswoman for Qantas said that airlines worldwide are now facing the complex process of returning to pre-Corona times.

This also includes getting pilots who have been on the ground back used to work.

Qantas quickly realized that special reintegration programs were necessary and initiated them.

"Safety is our number one priority," she said.

According to information from the aviation portal FlightGlobal, less than 50 percent of pilots were flying at all until last summer.

According to a database in which errors can be reported anonymously, the pandemic increased the number of fatal omissions.

For example, some crews reported that they had taken off or landed even though no clearance was available.

joe / AFP