Air traffic controllers demonstrated how to fly and land the Cessna 208 jet at Palm Beach International Airport to 39-year-old Darren Harrison.
When the pilot of his plane abruptly fell forward, Darren Harrison sprang into action.
When he called air traffic control, he indicated that he had no idea how to fly or land the plane, and controllers on the ground were able to walk him through it safely.
“I’ve got a serious situation here,” Harrison radioed to air traffic controllers in Fort Pierce, Florida, at around noon on May 10. “My pilot has gone incoherent. I have no idea how to fly the airplane.”
The pilot, whose identity has not been revealed, felt ill approximately an hour after taking off from Leonard Thompson Airport in the Bahamas with Harrison and one other passenger in a Cessna 208 plane.
The pilot then fell against the controls, sending the plane into a plunge, according to a Federal Aviation Administration blog post.
That’s when Harrison took command and asked for assistance. According to The New York Times, he first communicated with Fort Pierce air traffic controller Christopher Flores, who attempted to locate the plane.
Harrison had no idea how to use the navigation equipment, but he could see the Florida coast.
“Maintain wings level and just try to follow the coast either northbound or southbound,” Flores told him. “We’re trying to locate you.”
Air traffic controllers at Palm Beach International Airport took over after roughly 10 minutes. Robert Morgan, an air traffic controller, told WPBF that he was on a break when one of his coworkers told him
“There’s a passenger flying a plane that’s not a pilot and the pilot is incapacitated so they said you need to help them try and land the plane.”
Morgan, a seasoned flight instructor, hurried to assist. However, because Morgan was unfamiliar with Cessna 208 planes, one of his coworkers printed out images of the cockpit and Morgan coached Harrison on how to land the jet.
“He was really calm,” Morgan told CNN. “He said, ‘I don’t know how to fly. I don’t know how to stop this thing if I do get on the runway.’”
To WPBF, Morgan added, “I knew the plane was flying like any other plane, I just knew I had to keep him calm, point him to the runway and tell him how to reduce the power so he could descend to land.”
“Try to hold the wings level and see if you can start descending for me,” Morgan told him. “Push forward on the controls and descend at a very slow rate.”
Morgan told WPBF that Harrison had safely landed the plane on the tarmac before he knew it. Morgan hurried down to greet him and hugged him tightly.
“I felt like I was going to cry then, because I had so much adrenaline built up,” Morgan told CNN. “I was really happy that it worked out and that nobody got hurt.”
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