With no previous flying experience, this passenger quickly had to take control of the situation after realizing the pilot of a commercial Florida flight headed to the Bahamas was incapacitated.
On Tuesday afternoon, a single-engine Cessna 208 set off for the Bahamas.
However, radio reports quickly started trying to contact air traffic control because the pilot had become entirely incapacitated and unresponsive. A passenger on the line was trying to communicate that the pilot had gone completely ‘incoherent’, and someone somehow had to land this plane.
Passenger Darren Harrison took up the task. He was put into direct communication with an air traffic controller, Robert Morgan, who was a certified flight instructor.
Quickly positioned in the driver’s seat, Harrison said that he had been around aviation a lot and seen others fly planes, but that he had no idea how to fly a plane himself. Morgan knew that this was the only moment he really had to prove he was a good aviation teacher.
“I rush overthere and I walk in and the room is really busy…and they’re like, ‘Hey, this pilot’s incapacitated. The passengers are flying the plane. They have no flying expereince.”
“I said, ‘Oh boy.'”
Morgan, CNN’s New Day
Morgan claims that Harrison was actually really calm and collected, but that he feared what would happen as soon as he would have to descend towards a runway. Surprisingly, once the plane is already up in the air, things are quite easy.
Although Morgan himself had never flown this model of aircraft before, he quickly pulled up a picture of the panel’s layout and instructions, to start guiding his new student along the way.
He made the decision to guide the aircraft towards the biggest airport in the vicinity, and Harrison followed instructions to near the aircraft towards Palm Beach International.
Together, Morgan and Harrison managed to get the Cessna to touch down on the runway. Apparently, it takes about 20 hours of practice and training to learn to descend this model of aircraft on the runway, but this dream team managed to do so safely right on cue. Morgan says it was a 10 out of 10 landing!
“I felt like I was going to cry then because I had so much adrenaline built up…I was really happy that it worked out and that nobody got hurt.” Morgan shares.
Many pilots were stunned by the impressiveness of the air traffic controllers’ guidance and the ability of the passenger to safely land the aircraft.
According to the Federal Aviation Administration, the original pilot of the aircraft had certain medical issues that were not known beforehand.
After landing the plane, Morgan and his new student Harrison met. They embraced in a large hug and shared compliments.
“It was an emotional moment. He said that he just wanted to get home to his pregnant wife, and that felt even better. In my eyes, he was the hero. I was just doing my job.” Morgan says.
In other aviation-related news, read here about how a crashed UFO was recently found by a Google Maps user.
