Two planes had to circle the Greek island of Lesbos for more than half-an-hour after an air traffic controller overslept.

The planes, an Olympic Airlines aircraft arriving from Athens and a Slovakian Airlines plane, waited in the skies over the Aegean sea. They made several failed attempts to get in touch with the control tower, which remained silent despite their increasingly urgent messages.

"They were calling the tower to get directions, but no one would answer," a police official said. "The woman later said she overslept." The airport's secondary control service assisted the pilots to land after they had circled for 40 minutes. Police said the controller, who was not named, would be suspended for a few days.

The news comes days after a pair of pilots working for the Hawaiian airlines Go were fired for sleeping through the plane's landing procedure. The pair had not responded to nearly a dozen calls from controllers in the space of just 17 minutes.

I thought you needed to be refreshed for that job...

A quiet five minutes never hurt anyone.

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