Air India pilot snored as he slept before crash killed 158

THE pilot of an Air India flight that crashed in May, killing 158 passengers, slept through more than half the trip and woke up disoriented when it was time to land, investigators have found.

The court of inquiry - appointed by the Indian government to probe the 22 May crash - said flight commander Zlatko Glusica was disoriented and his reactions were slow while bringing the aircraft in to land at Mangalore airport, it was reported.

A government official confirmed the reports were accurate, but said details would be made official only after the verdict had been formally presented to India's parliament.

The Air India Express flight from Dubai to Mangalore in southern India overshot a hilltop runway, crashed and plunged over a cliff, killing 158 people instantly. Eight people survived.

The panel examined information contained in the digital flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder of the aircraft, which were found at the crash site. The panel said Mr Glusica reacted late and did not follow standard operating procedures during the landing. The pilot was suffering from "sleep inertia" after his nap and was "disoriented" when the plane began its descent.

The data recorders caught the sound of heavy nasal snoring, the Hindustan Times reported.

Co-pilot, HS Ahluwalia, was also heard repeatedly warning Mr Glusica to abort the landing and try the procedure again. The last words captured by the recorders as the plane crashed were those of one of the pilots saying, "Oh my God."

Mr Glusica, a native of Serbia, had more than 10,200 hours of flying experience, while Mr Ahluwalia had clocked up 3,650 hours. There was no immediate comment on the report from the airline.

India's civil aviation minister Praful Patel said his ministry had received the report and the government would study it before taking any further action.

The Mangalore crash was the deadliest in India since the November 1996 mid-air collision between a Saudi airliner and a Kazakh cargo plane near New Delhi that killed 349 people.

The report will add to growing concern worldwide about the dangers posed by exhausted pilots working heavy schedules. Pilot unions are fighting efforts by budget-strapped airlines to get them to work longer hours.

Over the past 15 years, about a dozen fatal crashes and numerous close calls have been blamed on pilot fatigue, a key cause of one of the deadliest accidents in aviation history in 1997, when a Korean Air Boeing 747 headed to Guam ploughed into a hillside and killed 228 people.

Studies show exhaustion can impair a pilot's judgment in much the same way alcohol does.It's not uncommon for exhausted pilots to focus on a conversation or a single task and miss other things going on around them, including critical flight information. In a few cases, they have just fallen asleep.