ake-off Always Late In Arrival
Marseille air traffic alert
The disarming detail that both pilots may have fallen asleep on the job might have never been revealed had it not been for the quick work of alert by Marseille air traffic controllers.
The plane had regularly declared its position upon arriving into French airspace at Brest, but then, as the plane passed from Bordeaux air traffic control to Marseille, pilots failed to respond to Marseille air traffic controllers. They had tried in vain several times to contact the pilots about their position.
Alarmed about a potential terrorist incident, French air authorities contacted their roman counterparts at 5.21 am.
They in turn contacted the ITA Airways central command, who tried to contact the pilots via their satellite cell phones.
French authorities alerted two fighter jets to prepare to fly near the passenger plane to surveil the pilot’s cabin. Meanwhile ITA’s command centre began sending messages to the pilots via ACARS, a digital data link system for transmission of short messages between aircraft and ground stations via satellite.
Despite the fact that ACARS messages are displayed on the pilot’s monitors, there was still radio silence. More than 10 minutes after repeated attempts to reach them had failed, the pilots eventually responded and went on to land in Rome 20 minutes before their scheduled arrival time.…