Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain snoozing.
A Pakistani airlines captain has landed in hot water after taking a long nap in business class while a trainee was at the controls.
Capt. Amir Akhtar Hashmi, a senior pilot with Pakistan International Airlines, grabbed 2½ hours of shuteye shortly after taking off April 26 from Islamabad en route to London, dawn.com reported.
Hashmi — who gets paid the equivalent of about $1,500 a month to train pilots — left the trainee, Mohammad Asad Ali, in control of the flight while First Officer Ali Hassan Yazdani sat in an observer’s seat, the site reported.
One of the 305 passengers aboard noticed the napping numbskull sawing logs while covered by a blanket. The passenger snapped a photo of the pilot and raised hell about the disturbing scene.
The senior flight attendant mentioned the complaint in her flight log.
“Passenger (Seat 1 D) complained that while the captain was sleeping in business class cabin, I (the passenger) do not feel safe. It had been explained that two other crew members were in the cockpit but he said that he would follow the matter and write down a complaint card as well,” purser Nazneen Haider wrote.
Both pilots in the cockpit failed to report the incident to PIA management.
The airline also tried to avoid an inquiry of Hashmi, a former president of the influential Pakistan Air Lines Pilots Association — “but later caved in to pressure from above.”
Hashmi, who eventually was removed from flight duty for the incident, has compromised passenger safety before, dawn.com reported.
During his tenure as PALPA president, he had flown long-haul trans-Atlantic flights several times without first resting for the prescribed duration and gotten away with it.