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image source, Getty Images
A Cessna 208 Caravan model aircraft, similar to the one that was landed by the passenger.
“I have no idea how to fly the plane.”
The tension is literally in the air: worry and stress are felt in every second of the call that occurred at noon on Tuesday.
On one side is an air traffic controller from a control tower in Florida. On the other, a passenger who has taken command of a single-engine Cessna 208 Caravan whose pilot, he says, became “incoherent.”
“I have a very serious situation here (on board),” says the man, whose identity has not been revealed. Nor have details emerged regarding who was on board or what happened to the real pilot.
He immediately explains that something has happened to the pilot and he has taken control of the flight. But there is a problem: has never flown a plane.
Data from the FlightAware site show that the flight had departed from Marsh Harbor, in the Bahamas, almost an hour and a half before communication with the tower.
After the first contact, the flight controller, identified by local television station WPBF as Robert Morgantry to locate the aircraft as an initial step for help.
“What is your position?” he says, according to what is heard in the recording of the call on the LiveATC.net site.
“I have no idea,” replies the passenger.
He then adds that he can see the Florida coast ahead, but he doesn’t really know where it is.
After a few agonizing minutes, the passenger asks once more:
“Guys, have you located me? I can’t even get my navigation screen to turn on (…) Do you have any ideas regarding that?” he says.
Morgan, who is also a flight instructor, gives him a hurried introduction to aeronautics class, telling him to “keep your wings level” and to “just try to follow the coast, either north or south.”
The Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office incident report indicates that at 12:27 pm local time on Tuesday, police received notification that the pilot was “unconscious” and that a passenger was flying the aircraft.
The plane was eventually located regarding 10 kilometers southwest of Palm Beach International Airport.
By then the most complicated part of the process was missing: guiding it to the airport and landing, one of the most complicated flight maneuvers even for professional pilots.
And there was another problem: As he told CNN, Morgan had never flown this model of Cessnaso it was more difficult for him to instruct the man on how to land it.
The controller said he looked up a picture of the instrument panel layout for that type of plane and began guiding his impromptu student through the emergency.
He decided to guide him to the international airport, he said, because it is bigger and has a larger runway, which would facilitate the herculean task of the pilot-passenger.
“Try to keep your wings level and see if you can start to descend. Push the controls forward and descend at a very slow pace,” he is heard saying in the audio.
A video obtained by local television station WPBF shows the Cessna slowly landing on the runway, an operation that can typically take a pilot up to 20 hours to learn.
image source, Getty Images
According to Morgan, if I had to evaluate the way the man did it, I’d give it a 10 out of 10.
following landing
Morgan said that following landing he felt like crying.
“I was very happy that everything went well and that no one was hurt,” he told the television station.
The controller says that he went to the track and hugged his “student”.
“It was an emotional moment. He told me he just wanted to come home to his pregnant wife,” Morgan recalled.
In other recordings following the landing on the LiveATC.net site, it is heard that even some professional pilots were impressed by what happened.
image source, Getty Images
“You just saw a couple of passengers land that plane,” a tower operator is heard saying to an American Airlines pilot waiting to take off.
“Did you say that the passengers landed the plane?” the captain asked, stunned.
“Oh my gosh. What a great job,” he added.
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