An Air Canada regional flight from Newark to Halifax diverted safely to Boston on Wednesday after the captain suffered a seizure.
Passengers helped to restrain him in the cabin while the first officer landed the regional carrier PAL’s Dash 8-400 aircraft. The pilot was taken to Massachusetts General Hospital after landing.
One passenger explains that the plane swerved, that a flight attendant rushed into the cockpit, and that a pilot was pulled out into the aisle. He and four other passengers helped restrain the captain while the first officer flew the aircraft to Boston. The pilot was not violent, but physically out of control, and the restraint effort lasted roughly 40 minutes. A registered nurse onboard helped direct passengers.
Another passenger shared,
“That was terrifying. We have SAFELY landed in Boston. Mid-air, the flight attendants are serving drinks and the whole plane goes almost sideways.
The pilot had a major medical emergency- they had to drag him out of the cockpit and restrain him – anyone with ANY medical training ran to the front and everyone else shuffled back to the back of the plane…it took at least 5 people including the flight attendants to get him situated and restrained.
I don’t know if he had a seizure, stroke, heart attack, whatnot, but he was screaming and thrashing…this went on for about 20 minutes…we’re on the ground now and medical services have gotten him. We’ll figure out whatever we need to do to get where we’re going, but God bless copilots.“
PAL here is the Canadian airline formerly known as Provincial Airlines and was operating as Air Canada Express using a De Havilland/Bombardier DHC-8-400 (Q400) and 61 passengers were onboard.
That’s the stuff of nightmares, but the redundancy of a two-pilot c*ckpit worked as it was supposed to (yeah, shame on those who keep pitching single-pilot operations). Kudos to the crew and the passengers who stepped in. I feel for that captain. Beyond the immediate medical scare, it’ll be an uphill battle with medical boards, even if it turns out to be a freak, one-off issue. Standard medical exams monitor risks, but they can’t predict a first-time event. Hopefully, he makes a swift recovery.
(See, Gary, I’m learning. I now know your auto-mod don’t like c*ck. LOL.)
Enrilia is reporting a seizure.
https://www.patreon.com/Enilria/posts/captain-has-on-162019578?
likely career limiting. and he might not be able to even retain a pilot’s certificate/license.
Sad for a presumably young pilot that had aspirations of a commercial airline carrier.
Hope medical professionals can figure out what caused it and get him the help he needs.
@1990,
I completely agree with you on this “That’s the stuff of nightmares, but the redundancy of a two-pilot c*ckpit worked as it was supposed to (yeah, shame on those who keep pitching single-pilot operations).”
I am pretty concerned about the push to planes being piloted by one individual, exactly for these reasons.
Here is a scarier scenario:
What happens if one pilot is in the bathroom, leaving the remaining pilot alone in cockpit with a FA. And that remaining pilot suffers a seizure?
I hope he is doing well now and hope they find out what happened to him. Hope his license want be taken away from him. Thanks to the passenger helped out to restain him so he wouldn’t get in the way of what the co- pilot could do the best job to get the airplane were it needed to go GOD BLESS