The Case of the Sleeping Pilots: Here are a few more findings shared by our readers

Last Week’s Poll

A few weeks back, news outlets reported that an Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 flight ran into trouble when both pilots fell asleep and overshot the runway. While passengers banging on the cockpit door and urgent messages from the control tower didn’t help, fortunately an alarm was triggered that corrected the aircraft’s descent, enabling the plane to land safely. Presumably, an investigation will be launched by the airline to determine the cause for the pilots’ flighty fatigue, but last week, we presented our own theories. Here are a few more findings shared by our readers.

Zaidy’s Mistake

All your theories are wrong.

There is only one possible reason the pilots both fell asleep. They took Zaidy Himmelstein’s sleep (sea sickness) pills! They were still asleep when the plane took off on its next route to Damascus, Syria. Duh!

Shvere Sugya

The pilot indeed was desperate to get enough zzz’s the night before. But what should he have done? Daf yomi was punkt in middle of the third perek of Kesubos, and the sugya was kom lei b’deraba minei. Just when he thought he had pshat, the copilot pointed out that it didn’t klap with the Rambam. After horeving the whole night without having found a pshat, they changed into uniform and started jockeying down the runway. Just as the plane started moving, they suddenly figured out that their hanachah was b’etzem wrong. With the Rambam meyushav, sleep overtook them.

Decaf Dangers

The day of that fateful flight, the pilots began their usual ritual of sitting down to steaming Nespressos, a tradition they claimed left them energized and alert for the flight ahead. But something went wrong this time.

“Sir,” shouted the copilot, racing into the lounge with a frenzied look on his face, “there are no Nespresso pods to be found in the entire airport!”

The pilot looked up in alarm. “That’s impossible! Have you really checked everywhere?”

“Yes,” the copilot replied, “I even made a mad dash to a nearby supermarket. The shelves containing the pods are empty. The only thing I could find was a box of decaf.”

The rest, as they say, is history…

What’s a Flight without Phylacteries?

All was going well behind the cockpit, when knock, knock! Two Chabad bochurim poked their heads through the door. The third kept the flight attendant distracted with his attempts to figure out which way was mizrach.

“Are you Jewish?” they asked the pilot. He wasn’t, but the copilot admitted that he was Jewish, though he’d never put on tefillin before.

“We’ll make a bar mitzvah right here!” the bochurim said excitedly. They helped him put on tefillin, and then pulled out a bottle of schnapps out.

“L’chayim!” A couple shots later, the pilots were both out cold.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 926)