Pilot Who Tried To Crash Alaska Airways Aircraft Dishes On Mushroom-Fueled Episode – eastpowernews

Pilot Who Tried To Crash Alaska Airways Aircraft Dishes On Mushroom-Fueled Episode

by Gary Leff on November 10, 2023

An off-duty Alaska Airways pilot tried to crash a airplane whereas using within the cockpit soar seat of a flight from Seattle Paine Area to San Francisco final month.

Joseph David Emerson tried to activate the fireplace suppression system to chop off gasoline to the airplane’s engines. The flight’s pilots wrestled him away. He was cuffed in the back of the plane and the airplane diverted to Portland. The pilot was arrested and he advised the police he thought he was dreaming and that he’d taken mushrooms.

Now the person is telling his facet of the story. He’s been depressed however by no means sought assist. His finest good friend died. He was touring continuous, not simply flying a brand new airplane (shifting from Airbus to Boeing narrowbodies) but additionally performing as a pilot security consultant out of San Francisco.

He’d gotten along with mates to have fun his good friend who had died, and he combined mushrooms and alcohol – and days later thought he was dreaming and couldn’t get up. All he was attempting to do was get up and that’s why he tried to kill the engines, and in addition tried to open the airplane’s emergency exit as soon as taken to the again. He even says that the grabbed a espresso pot from the galley and drank it straight to wake himself up.

Whereas being held by police on the airport he took off all of his garments, he urinated on himself, and he tried cuffing the carrot… all to ‘get up.’ When he was given a telephone to name an lawyer, he as a substitute rang his spouse and sang It’s So Laborious to Say Goodbye to Yesterday by Boyz II Males.

My takeaways: the story might be true, it’s additionally a fairly good non permanent madness protection? And it appears pitch excellent for the present dialog on pilot psychological well being.

It’s a actual problem that many medical situations a pilot might have aren’t going to be apparent in a medical examination, and that you really want pilots with issues to have the ability to communicate up. That’s doubly so once they’re psychological issues or issues with alcohol and medicines. However talking up and searching for assist creates the danger of being sidelined, regardless of applications designed to encourage them to take action.

Put one other means, you need pilots to have the ability to really feel protected coming ahead with their issues. However as soon as they inform you they’re hallucinating and having ideas about bringing down an plane, are you able to allow them to again within the cockpit? And conserving them from doing so communicates that they’ll’t safely come ahead within the first place. All of the applications designed to handle this on the earth nonetheless face this basic conundrum, and try and dial considerably extra in direction of pilot security. However this isn’t a simple subject.

Extra From View from the Wing