A Passenger Had To Land A Plane In An Emergency
If you've ever been on a plane, here’s a scene you’ve played out in your head a thousand times:
You’re one of only a handful of passengers on board. There aren't even any flight attendants to bring you a bag of those little pretzels. Suddenly, the plane starts shaking and the lights flicker. You chalk it up to basic turbulence ... until the shaking becomes more violent.
You can feel yourself lifting off of the seat. Then all of a sudden, the hatch for the overhead oxygen masks flies open and out pops ... an eastern diamondback rattlesnake? Wait, no. This isn’t Snakes on a Plane. Hit the rewind button and go back a few seconds.
There ... stop. OK, the plane is about to go into a nosedive. You race to the cockpit and find both of the pilots slumped over the controls. You pull one of them back and oh my God! It’s Peter Graves! Then, Leslie Nielsen walks in and asks if you can fly this plane and land it. You say, “Surely, you can’t be serious.” Nielsen says, “I am being serious ...” Wait, stop, STOP! This isn’t Airplane!, either. I mean, it is, sort of, but non sequiturs are not vital to this situation. Go back again.
The pilots are slumped over the controls. You pull back the pilot in the left chair because you remember the left chair is always where the lead pilot sits in the movies, which is the entire basis for your aviation knowledge. And unlike those other cases where you let your pop culture knowledge serve as a foundation for general knowledge, your assumption is correct because the left side of the cockpit offers the best view of other passing aircraft to prevent collisions.
Would you be able to bring that big, metal bird in for a landing, saving yourself and a severely understaffed airline crew?
Darren Harrison got to test his mettle in a similar, recent situation as a passenger in a single-engine Cessna 208. According to CNN Travel, the man had to learn how to cram years of aviation experience into a single landing when the pilot became incapacitated mid-flight.
Air Traffic Controller Robert Morgan told the cable news network that the flight was headed out from the Bahamas when the only operational pilot became incapacitated with what the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) only identified as a “possible medical issue.”
Morgan says he and his fellow controllers had to talk one of the passengers, later identified as Harrison, through the process of flying and landing using a picture of the plane’s instrument panel layout. He also told Harrison to follow the Florida coastline so air traffic watchers could pinpoint his location. Once they’d found the rogue-piloted plane, Morgan kept a runway at Palm Beach International Airport open to give Harrison “a really big target to aim at.”
The requirements for obtaining a private pilot license from the FAA vary depending on the aircraft. A single engine aircraft, as in this case, normally requires three hours of cross country flight training, night flight training, and 10 hours of solo time encompassing over 100 nautical miles and 10 takeoffs and landings. And you must get all 10 of those takeoffs and landings, otherwise you get an F, according to the U.S. Electronic Code of Federal Regulations, Title 14, Chapter 1, Subchapter D, Part 61, Subpart E (which, incidentally, is a thing I’ve always wanted to quote).
All of that required training logs in at about 20 hours, but Harrison was going to have to cram it all into a few minutes for his final approach. Fortunately, Harrison and Morgan were able to do just that, bringing the plane in to a pinpoint landing that saved all souls aboard.
A staticky flight recording of the tense moments as Harrison brings the plane in on approach is available on LiveATC.net. It doesn’t include the part where the plane hits the tarmac and comes to a complete stop, but I imagine it involves a whole crowd of air traffic controllers cheering and hollering while Morgan puts out his last cigarette and slumps his head on the desk trying to hide the tears that only fall at the end of a tense, successful mission. Then, the sweeping sounds of composer Elmer Bernstein’s score swoops in to lift up the moment when Harrison and his fellow passengers take one, first grateful step on the ground and ... you’re doing it again. Stop that.
