Pilot fatigue caused Air Canada dive

BBC, April 18, 2012

Fatigue led a pilot to send a passenger plane into a dive over the North Atlantic, injuring 16 people last year, BBC reported. The drama began when the co-pilot of the Air Canada flight from Toronto to Zurich woke up and wrongly believed the plane was on a collision course. He mistook the planet Venus for another plane.

Passengers without their seat belts on were thrown from their seats. The report said that during the January 2011 flight the pilot had a 75-minute nap, failing to follow procedure for controlled sleeps of 40 minutes each.