airplane carrying 70 passengers safely lands in emergency return to tri-cities airport

If one of them becomes incapacitated, the other simply takes over.

These small planes are the top choice in flight schools, as they are sturdy and relatively intuitive to control, and as a result they have become popular with flight enthusiasts.Ĭrucially, they only require one pilot, whereas larger planes have two (or more, in the case of long haul commercial flights that employ crew rotation). There’s a common trait in these events: they all involved Cessna aircraft. And in 2012 in Wisconsin, 80-year-old Helen Collins, who had some piloting experience, successfully landed the plane her husband was flying before he fell ill. In 2013, pensioner John Wildey, who had served in the air force but not as a pilot, safely brought an aircraft to the ground in northeast England, in the dark and after a few unsuccessful attempts. In 2019, flight student Max Sylvester landed a plane in Western Australia during his very first flying lesson, after the pilot had lost consciousness.

The incident is just the latest in a streak of similarly lucky “talk-down” landings, in which a passenger landed a plane safely with the assistance of someone from the ground or on other aircraft. But with over-the-radio help from certified flight instructor and air traffic controller Robert Morgan, Harrison landed the plane almost perfectly at Palm Beach International Airport. The pilot of his flight from Bahamas to Fort Pierce in Florida, in early May, had “gone incoherent,” leaving the single-engine Cessna 208 aircraft with no one at the controls. If your name is Darren Harrison, the answer is yes. It’s a nightmare scenario: the pilot of your flight is incapacitated and someone has to get in their seat and land the plane.

Airplane carrying 70 passengers safely lands in emergency return to tri-cities airport