Not Bad for His First Flight

I’m still trying to wrap my head around the passenger who successfully landed the plane he was flying on after the pilot passed out.

It happened in Florida earlier this month. The plane was a single-engine Cessna, bound for Ft. Pierce, Fla., from the Bahamas.

I’ve seen this plot in the movies a time or two.

But this happened in real life when a passenger named Darren Harrison jumped in the driver’s seat after the pilot became incoherent.

According to news reports, while Harrison had never flown a plane before, he had watched other pilots fly and had some knowledge of aviation.

I’ve been around football players. I’ve been to football games. But you won’t see me tossing my popcorn and grabbing a helmet if my quarterback ever goes down.

The actual recording between Harrison and the airport is widely available online. I’ll save you some time.

Harrison starts out by saying, “I’ve got a serious situation here. My pilot has gone incoherent. I have no idea how to fly the airplane.”

The tower says, “What’s your position?”

“I have no idea. I see the coast of Florida in front of me, and I have no idea.”

I’ll tell you what my position would’ve been.

Fetal.

Harrison informed the tower he was at 9,100 feet, to which the tower says, ”Try to hold the wings level and see if you can start descending for me. Push forward on the controls and descend at a very slow rate.”

I guess by “the controls” he meant that thingy that looks like a race car steering wheel. And I also surmise that pushing that little thingy forward would make the plane descend.

I think it’s important to note here that no other passengers can be heard reciting the 23rd Psalm at the top of their lungs. Maybe that means no one was on the plane.

Or maybe it means they had already jumped.

Tower: “Try to follow the coast either north or southbound. We’ll try to locate you.”

I don’t know how much a radar screen at an international airport costs, but I would be very concerned if I thought I was going to have to roll down the window and wave so they would know which plane was me.

And this is where it got really interesting.

The Ft. Pierce tower decided to head Harrison toward Palm Beach, the area’s biggest airport, to give Harrison a bigger runway to try and hit.

The rest of the recording where we can hear Harrison is mostly the Ft. Pierce tower trying to get him in touch with the Palm Beach tower.

To make a long story short, Harrison landed the plane safely amid commercial jets waiting to take off.

I hope he took a real long victory lap around the tarmac, but I’ll bet he got out and kissed the ground.

Incidentally — and this is certainly no laughing matter — the pilot was incoherent due to suffering a tear in his aorta during the flight. As of a couple of days ago, his surgeon says his recovery has been “remarkable.”

I don’t know about you, but I feel like at least one person on that plane still has great things to do on this earth.