Passenger Lands Caravan
By
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May 11, 2022
Check CNN Video her: https://tinyurl.com/3t34rcsa
A passenger with no flight training was able to
land a Cessna Caravan in Palm Beach on Tuesday after the pilot collapsed at the
controls. The passenger, Darren Harrison, of Lakeland, Florida, the only
passenger, was able to contact air traffic control. “I’ve got a serious
situation here,” the passenger said in his initial call. “My pilot has gone
incoherent. I have no idea how to fly the airplane.” After some initial
guidance from controllers to get the aircraft stabilized, he was directed to
Palm Beach and controller Robert Morgan, a former flight instructor, talked him
in.
Morgan reportedly downloaded an image of the panel
layout on a Caravan to help him tell the passenger what to push, pull and
flick, but it seems his main message to the remarkably calm sudden pilot was to
keep that demeanor. “I knew that if he just kept the plane, the nose pointed
down and head to the big runway he had a really good chance as long as he
didn’t panic,” Morgan told WPBF. The result was a slightly wobbly three pointer
on the runway. Morgan was obviously careful not to overload the neophyte
aviator with unnecessary information. With all three firmly on the asphalt, the
passenger keyed the mic for one last bit of direction. “I have no idea how to
stop the airplane.”
There were some tense moments shortly after the
pilot went unconscious when the plane entered a 250-knot dive and lost about 2,500 feet before
recovery. The flight originated in the Bahamas and was tracking north of Palm
Beach when the pilot collapsed. The Caravan was undamaged and the pilot was
taken to a Palm Beach hospital where he stayed overnight. The cause of his
incapacitation was not released. The aircraft appears to be privately owned by
two partners in Connecticut.
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