Off-duty pilot who ‘tried to crash plane’ speaks out.
The skies over the U.S. have seen some bizarre incidents, but nothing quite like what happened on October 22, 2023.
An off-duty pilot, Joseph David Emerson, allegedly tried to crash a plane with 83 passengers on board.
Emerson, 44, has now broken his silence to share what led to that fateful moment.
Routine flight turns terrifying.
Emerson was riding as a passenger in the jump seat of Alaska Airlines Flight 2059, heading to San Francisco from Everett, Washington.
Everything seemed routine – until Emerson suddenly tried to shut down the engines mid-flight.
Panic spread through the cockpit as Emerson reached for two red handles that could have ended in catastrophe.
He was subdued by the crew and quickly removed from the cockpit, but the scare was far from over.
So, what caused this normally level-headed pilot to snap?
Mushrooms trip gone wrong.
Emerson claims it all started two days before the flight, during a trip he took to commemorate his best friend’s death.
To cope with the grief, Emerson and his friends decided to take psychedelic mushrooms, a hallucinogenic that can cause intense and prolonged trips.
“I just wanted to feel closer to him,” Emerson explained. “But it spiraled out of control.”
The effects of the mushrooms, usually lasting up to 6 hours, lingered for Emerson much longer than anticipated.
Emerson recounted that even as he headed to the airport, something felt off. His mind was foggy, and reality felt distorted.
Emerson breaks his silence.
As he settled into his seat in the cockpit, the pressure only mounted.
Emerson described a haunting sensation of being “trapped,” unable to distinguish reality from hallucination.
“I kept thinking, ‘Am I trapped in this airplane and now I’ll never go home?’,” he told ABC News.
The tension peaked when Emerson received a text from a friend, urging him to do breathing exercises to calm down.
Instead of calming him, the text exacerbated his paranoia, causing him to believe he was in a dream he couldn’t wake from.
“That’s when I flung off my headset. I was fully convinced this isn’t real, and I’m not going home,” he confessed.
What happened next was a split-second decision that could have led to a tragedy.
Emerson’s critical decision revealed.
Emerson reached for the two red handles in front of him – the emergency engine shutoff controls.
He thought pulling them would wake him up from what he believed was a dream.
“I know what those levers do in a real airplane,” Emerson admitted, “but I thought pulling them would snap me out of it.”
Pilots save the day.
Fortunately, the on-duty pilots acted fast, pulling his hands away before disaster struck.
Emerson was immediately removed from the cockpit and placed in a flight attendant’s seat.
But even outside the cockpit, Emerson’s ordeal wasn’t over.
Continued chaos exposed.
He began to hallucinate again, contemplating whether jumping out of the plane might “wake him up.”
He attempted to grab the cabin door lever, but a quick-thinking flight attendant stopped him just in time.
In a moment of clarity, Emerson texted his wife, Sarah, admitting, “I made a big mistake.”
Recognizing the danger, he asked to be handcuffed to prevent further harm until the plane landed.
Emerson punished for grave error.
Upon landing, Emerson was taken into custody, where he spent 45 days behind bars before being granted bail.
Emerson’s actions could have had deadly consequences, but thankfully, no one was hurt.
And as Emerson faces his day in court, the world will be watching, waiting for the next chapter in this shocking saga.