Eh. The run-out after touchdown was only a few hundred feet. A small craft in the wrong spot could be hopped over or touched down short of with real good odds. But yeah that would make a good story: “I was out fishing with my pals and a jet landed on my 24-foot center-console. No, I wasn’t drunk. It really happened.”
Conveniently Sully’s event occurred in decent weather and during a cold, but not utterly frigid, time of year. Few pleasure craft out, but the water wasn’t promptly deadly to anyone who fell in.
Had there been an ocean-going ship out there crosswise to the channel, say just preparing to enter a dock, or just having left one, that could have forced them into a real no-win crack: too tall to trust you can go over without running out of speed before getting down safely on the other side, too close to get safely into the water at a tolerable speed and descent beforehand, and too wide to maneuver around.
The good news is that as busy as that part of the NY harbor is, that only means a few big ships in that area per day not one vehicle every 90 seconds as happens at JFK or LGA.
We were kayaking our favorite stretch of the upper Allegheny River near Foxburg when a small plane made an overhead pass. We had seen a floatplane before (on land) along the river, so we paddled over to the shore.
The plane circled around and landed. Cool beans! After, we paddled over to his dock where he thanked us. We then watched him use a winch to pull the plane up a set of ramps.
There’s a NYT article that’s saying he was on mushrooms, hadn’t slept in 40 hours and had been depressed for six months.
I’m just speculating here, but I wonder if this is going to bring up the conundrum for pilots who want to get help for whatever affliction, but are incentivized not to by how we attain and keep our medical certifications. A pilot seeking treatment for any sort of depression, no matter how mild, is opening a can of worms with regard to their medical.
Edit: To his credit, he apparently asked flight attendants to restrain him after he left the cockpit.
In a further update, CNN confirms that he was a Captain at Alaska Airlines. And that after the incident, he then tried to open the cabin door. My understanding is that this is impossible at altitude because of the pressure differential which he surely would have known. Sounds thoroughly unhinged.
Somehow I knew that “depression” would be brought up in this case, as though attempting to crash a plane with 80+ people on board is caused by depression (the Germanwings killer also reportedly was “depressed”).
Whatever happened here, drug-induced or some other kind of breakdown, was not due to depression, though that may have been an accompanying feature. While not a psychiatrist, it became obvious through my psych rotation in med school that people with all sorts of psychiatric diagnoses* routinely feel depressed too.
*recalling two suicidal patients in particular, one with out-of-control borderline personality disorder and a guy who talked to an Xmas ornament.
Pretty much as noted above, Emerson says hadn’t slept, took psychedelics, and thought he was in a dream. The scary part is he thought he was okay to work that day.
Seems remorseful, though not sure how comforting that is. “I’m admitting to what I did. I’m not fighting any charges you want to bring against me, guys.”
I had a misspent youth but I cannot ever think of doing what he did while on some drug. That said, I don’t know what he might have been on and, of course, everyone is different.
I’m amazed that any pilot would ever think doing drugs of any sort before flying was a good idea. I am happy this guy is never going to fly again. Glad he was caught before something worse happened (this was plenty bad).
I can’t imagine sobering up and then realizing what you had done. His life is pretty much over. Years in prison and then…nothing.
In Captain Trip’s defense, did he actually show up for work in that state? He wasn’t part of the flight crew on the plane he nearly crashed, he was just bumming a ride back to a different airport. If the guy had just spent the weekend partying non-stop, then did a bunch of shrooms expecting to basically sleep through the flight back home… well, the guy still deserves a shit-ton of consequences for nearly getting a bunch of people killed because he can’t handle his shit, but that’s not quite as bad as thinking he could actually fly a plane in that condition.
From ABC News: “The flight was en route from Everett, Washington, to San Francisco when it diverted to Portland, Oregon, the airline said. Emerson was scheduled to be on a flight crew of a 737 leaving San Francisco, according to a federal official.”
So he was deadheading to S.F.; haven’t seen when the S.F. flight was set to depart.
Correction: side door in the back leading to the outside. Cabin doors by contrast are very difficult to force now since they’ve been reinforced. My parents and a flight attendant freaked when I tried that when I was like 4, but yes was at 30K+ and I had no chance even if I was Arnie S.