Airplane sabotage attempt by off-duty Alaska Airlines pilot
An off-duty Alaska Airlines pilot was charged with 83 counts of attempted murder for allegedly trying to shut down a plane’s engines midflight on Sunday.
The big picture: Joseph David Emerson, 44, was riding in the jump seat of Alaska Airlines flight 2059 from Everett, Washington, to San Francisco and was subdued after attempting the shutdown, the company said.
Two observations of mine.
The first is that there is a precedent in this extraordinary case, although in the former incident it was not a passenger plane but a FedEx flight:
My second observation is that Emerson sounds like a regular guy:
Neighbors described Emerson as a “positive, very friendly, upbeat,” father of two.
On a quiet street in Pleasant Hill, Emerson, his wife, and two young sons live in a one-story house decorated with Halloween ghost, tombstone, and skeleton displays on the front lawn..
There’s a photo there of Emerson, whose face and expression arouse no red flags. So, what’s the deal? Well, the FedEx flight perp had a previously good resume but recently was about to face a disciplinary procedure and was apparently afraid of losing his job and worried for his family’s financial future. That was his motive:
Also in the airplane was 42-year-old FedEx flight engineer Auburn Calloway, an alumnus of Stanford University and a former Navy pilot and martial-arts expert, who was facing possible dismissal over falsifying of his flight hours. To disguise the hijacking as an accident, so his family would benefit from his US$2.5 million (equivalent to $4.9 million in 2022) life-insurance policy, Calloway intended to murder the flight crew using blunt force. To accomplish this, he brought on board two claw hammers, two club hammers, a speargun, and a knife (which was not used) concealed inside a guitar case. He also carried with him a note written to his ex-wife and “describing the author’s apparent despair”. Just before the flight, Calloway had transferred over US$54,000 (equivalent to $106,600 in 2022) in securities and cashier’s checks to his ex-wife.
My guess is that there’s some version of that for Emerson.
The news said he took Magic Mushrooms and had been awake for 40 hours. We live in a crazy clown circus.
james sisco:
If so, then he could have just sat back and enjoyed the view. Instead, he tries to crash the plane? And why did this nice family man take all those drugs in the first place?
I’m hearing he consumed psylocybin mushrooms and was having a bad trip.
Sgt Joe Friday:
Please see my comment just above yours.
As always, Juan Browne has the most complete account of the Alaska Airlines incident. Browne is a professional pilot and knows what he’s talking about. He includes the Vasaviation transcript from yesterday as well as the most recent local journalist description as well as info. about the Embraer aircraft model involved:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ze_WIE3Yokg
Per that YouTube, “Emerson peacefully walked to the back of the plane after leaving the cockpit and told a flight attendant that he had “just got kicked out of the flight deck” then told another attendant “You need to cuff me right now or it’s going to be bad”
Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde? Or shades of The Exorcist?
I can’t say that in my dissolute youth after taking psylocybin mushrooms I ever experienced that sort of dual personality…
Court statement says that he took magic mushrooms two days before, was badly dehydrated, and had been battling depression for six years. He thought it was a dream and was trying to wake up.
https://katu.com/news/local/pilot-who-tried-to-shut-off-engines-of-plane-mid-flight-was-high-on-psychedelic-mushrooms-psilocybin-arrest-doc-says-alaska-horizon-portland-international-airport
When I first moved to Seattle in the mid 70s, the place to pick shrooms was here:
https://kingcounty.gov/so-so/dept/dnrp/nature-recreation/parks-recreation/king-county-parks/parks/marymoor
My favorite ex-girlfriend from Pender, Nebraska said, “Be kind to people because you don’t know what burden they are carrying.”
Thanks for the link to Juan Brown’s video, PA+Cat. Lots of good info there.
A strange occurrence. This guy has ruined his life because he didn’t avail himself of the employee services available to all airline pilots.
Mental health problems aren’t addressed well in this country. If they were we wouldn’t have so many homeless people. At the very least most people should be aware that it is not shameful to ask for help when you need it.
Why would he take a hallucinogenic mushroom? Hoping to relieve his depression? Maybe. Why have states made these sorts of drugs legal? It.Makes.No.Sense.
Thank goodness he wasn’t able to do any real damage.
J.J.–
I’m just glad there were two pilots in the cockpit when Emerson snapped. Following Germanwings Flight 9525, the two-pilots-in-the-cockpit-at-all-times rule became mandatory for most airlines (I think for all that operate in the United States, anyway). As for help-seeking on the part of air crew, Andreas Lubitz did seek help for his emotional problems, but kept his treatment secret from his airline– so the issue of medical confidentiality is still with us, AFAIK.
True jump seat story from my own family: I have a cousin who recently retired as a senior captain with American Airlines. When he was fresh out of a four-year college bachelor’s degree program in aviation (he didn’t take the military route), he was hired by a commuter airline for further training. At that time the trainee pilots sat in the cockpit jump seat to observe the captain and first officer– I don’t know whether this training pattern still holds. This particular airline used the smaller 20- or 25-seat planes that had only a small curtain– not a door– separating the passenger cabin and the flight deck (this was in the late 1970s). My cousin was sitting in the jump seat on a flight from Philly to Harrisburg when a drunken passenger, angered by the flight attendant’s refusal to serve him another drink, pushed through the curtain into the cockpit and decked the first officer. My cousin, who is about 6’3″, stood up and threw the drunk backward into the passenger cabin, where several passengers promptly sat on him. Meanwhile the captain was very calmly contacting Harrisburg and asking the plane to be met by LEOs when it touched down. My cousin said there was a reception committee of four very husky and very irritated state troopers waiting to take the drunk off the plane.
It’s easy to say that all worked out well in this case, but I’ve often wondered what might have happened if my cousin hadn’t been in the jump seat when the alcoholic punched out the first officer. I’m not sure that the captain could have flown the plane, monitored the instruments, and dealt effectively with the drunk all at the same time.
PA+Cat, good story. Sometimes we have to depend on fate or karma. We’ll never know how many times disaster has been averted by certain procedures, people, or happenstance coming together at the right time. As much as we would like to be in control, each time we venture out our door, s**t can happen.