Two pilots suspected of falling asleep on a flight from Honolulu to Hilo in February were fired last week by go! airlines and may also face Federal Aviation Administration sanctions.

Paul Skellon, vice president of corporate communications for Phoenix-based Mesa Air Group, go!'s parent company, issued a statement yesterday confirming the firing.

"After a thorough internal investigation into the incident on Feb. 13 in which go! Flight 1002 overflew the airport at Hilo, Mesa has terminated the employment of both pilots involved," Skellon said by telephone from Phoenix.

The pilots were not identified.

go! Flight 1002 was headed for Hilo Airport at about 10 a.m. but overshot the airport by 15 miles before returning to land safely. A radar track of the 214-mile flight provided by the website www.flightaware.com shows the plane remained at 21,000 feet as it flew past Hilo before returning to the airport. Air traffic controllers reportedly were unable to contact the pilots for a while.

FAA spokesman Ian Gregor, in a telephone interview from California, said findings from his agency's investigation will be released in a few weeks. Gregor said if there are FAA sanctions, they could range from a warning letter to suspension to revocation of the pilots' licenses.

go!, which began flying in Hawai'i in June 2006, flies 50-seat Bombardier CRJ-200 aircraft.

Local pilots say most commercial flights between Honolulu and Hilo have an autopilot function that can set the plane's route, altitude and speed. The autopilot also controls the descent when the aircraft approaches an airport.

But toward the end of the flight, the pilot needs to manually set a lower altitude for landing. Failure to do this would mean that the plane would continue past its landing point, which may have occurred on Flight 1002, the local pilots said.

FAA officials could not recall the last time they investigated an off-course airliner in Hawaii.

Complaints of pilot fatigue are not new to Mesa Air Group.

In 2006, Dallas TV station WFAA-TV reported that pilot schedules at Mesa's mainland operations were so tight that many pilots were flying exhausted and some were forced to camp in their aircraft.

Last year, the Mesa unit of the Air Line Pilots Association complained that staff shortages hurt morale and affected Mesa's operations on the Mainland.