Both pilots fell asleep at 36,000 feet: How an Airbus A320 with 157 passengers flew unwatched for nearly 30 minutes

For twenty-eight minutes, somewhere above Indonesia at 36,000 feet, nobody was flying the plane. Not because anything had broken. Not because of a storm, a bird strike, or a mechanical failure. The autopilot was engaged and doing exactly what it was told, the trouble was that the two pilots responsible for telling it anything had both drifted into a deep sleep, leaving 157 people in their care with nobody awake at the controls.

Also Read: In 1964, a mysterious 27-year-old woman bought abandoned 18-acre island off the coast of Maine & lived there alone; 22 years later, she donated the island to become wildlife sanctuary