Social media addiction causes fighter jet crash in 2013, says IAF chief

Air Marshal chief BS Dhanoa on Friday said that due to sleep deprivation owing to over use of social media by a pilot had caused a crash of an Indian Air Force fighter Jet in 2013 in Uttarlai, Rajasthan. The pilot died in the accident. 

Speaking at the 57th Indian Society of Aerospace Medicine conference organised in Bengaluru on Friday, Dhanoa, said we need a system to identify if the pilot had enough sleep before taking off sorties. He further said, Pilot spends too much time on social media sites at night, which leads to severe sleep deprivation.

“During summer season when the temperature goes to 40-degree Celsius is discouraged and so flight briefings take place early. Everybody appears to be spending long hours on social media, late nights. Most flight briefings, sometimes, are as early as 6 am and pilots haven’t had enough sleep,” he said.

He also called social media a new challenge before us, “We had an unfortunate air crash at Uttarlai (near Barmer in Rajasthan) in the year 2013 that resulted because of continuous sleep deprivation for a number of days. This is something which is a new challenge for us because of the changes in our society,” he said in the conference.

“In times before internet and social media, the barman would know if a pilot had one drink or too many and if he didn’t others would know and the pilot would be grounded for the day and nowadays we even have breath analysers. We also need a system which can identify pilots who didn’t have enough sleep,” Dhanoa quoted.

Also read: Air Force’s Jaguar Fighter Jet Crashes In Gujarat, killing the pilot