Apartment boiler led to pilot fatigue and 737 overshooting runway in Fort Nelson: federal investigation



File photo shows a Boeing 737 aircraft cming in for a landing.

Photograph by: JOHAN NILSSON , AFP/Getty Images Files

A pilot being kept awake the night before by the boiler in his apartment complex led to a Calgary-based Enerjet Boeing 737 overshooting the runway during landing at Fort Nelson Airport in northeast B.C.

A report by the federal transportation safety board into the Jan. 9, 2012, incident noted that the captain’s bedroom was “noisy and warm” and located above the boiler room of an apartment complex.

Despite being off work for 14 days, the captain “had had little to no sleep in the 24 hours prior to the flight and considered calling in sick, but due to the time off felt it would not be viewed in a favourable light.”

The report attributed the fatigue to mistakes being made during the landing approach.


“On short final the captain pitched the aircraft nose-down in an attempt to capture the glideslope which was below their flight path. The nose-down attitude increased the airspeed resulting in a longer flare and a touchdown beyond the recommended 1000-feet mark, thus reducing the amount of available runway for stopping.”

The chartered aircraft wound up 230 feet off the end of the runway in 15 inches of snow. None of the 112 passengers and six crew members were injured and the aircraft was not damaged.

The captain had about 7,500 hours total flight time and 50 hours as pilot-in-command.

As a result of the incident, Enerjet issued its flight crews with an open-book exam to raise awareness of “fatigue self-assessment” and to reassure “pilots that booking off duty was non-punitive in cases such as fatigue/illness/stress,” the board said.



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