No pilot! So calm air-traffic hero talks passenger in
My pilot has gone incoherent. I have no idea how to fly the airplane. Cessna passenger (right) who was able to land plane thanks to radio help from air-traffic controller Robert Morgan (left)
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He really earned his wings. A passenger headed home from the Bahamas miraculously landed a single-engine aircraft in Florida after his pilot became incapacitated and a longtime aviator coached him through the heart-racing ordeal.
“I’ve got a serious situation here about my pilot,” the panicked passenger-turned-airman is heard saying onboard the Cessna Grand Caravan on Tuesday around 12:30 p.m., according to audio posted by LiveATC.net.
“He’s incoherent. No idea how to fly the airplane, but I’m maintaining 9,100.”
Air-traffic controller Robert Morgan was on break outside the tower at Palm Beach International Airport reading a book when a colleague suddenly flagged him down about the emergency, WPBF reported.
“There’s a passenger flying a plane that’s not a pilot!” the coworker shouted.
“The pilot is incapacitated so they said you need to help them try and land the plane!”
Morgan, a controller with 20 years of experience in the tower, jumped into action.
In most cases, talking down an inexperienced pilot is a daunting task, but in this case it was even trickier considering the Cessna Grand Caravan’s hefty size. At 38-feet-long, the aircraft typically seats 14 and its weight alone would make it difficult for any beginner to manage.
But Morgan, a longtime aviator and flight instructor, has about 1,200 hours in the cockpit and plenty of experience turning novice pilots into professionals.
“Caravan 33 Lima Delta, roger, what’s your position?” the controller asks the passenger, who has not been publicly identified.
“I have no idea. I have the coast in front of me, but I have no idea,” the passenger replies. “He’s out,” the man says of the pilot.
“Roger, try to hold the wings level and see if you can start descending for me. Push forward on the controls and descend it at a very slow rate,” the controller tells him. As the newbie descends to 5,000 feet, the controller instructs him to follow the coastline as they tried to locate the plane, according to the audio.
Within moments, he is safely on the ground.
“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,” Morgan said.
It’s not immediately clear what happened to the pilot, who suffered from an apparent medical emergency, a spokesperson for the FAA said. It’s also not clear who owns the aircraft. FAA records state that it’s owned by Beach Amphibian LLC, but the man behind the corporation, David Ulrich, said he sold the turboprop Cessna in February and didn’t know who bought it.
“I just know those guys were going on a fishing trip,” Ulrich said referring to the pilot and passenger when reached by The Post. “I’m just happy everybody’s OK.”