The rogue pilot was arrested and charged with 83 counts of attempted murder

The rogue pilot was arrested and charged with 83 counts of attempted murder

An Alaska Airlines flight was diverted to Portland, Oregon on Sunday after the pilots informed air traffic control of a security risk onboard.

The flight was headed from Everett, Washington to San Francisco, California when Joseph David Emerson, a 44-year-old off-duty pilot employed by the carrier, attempted to shut off the plane’s engines. Emerson was flying as a passenger in the cockpit’s jump seat. The flight’s two pilots were able to subdue the potential plane-downing hijacker and remove him from out of the cockpit.

A transcript of one of the flight’s pilots contacting air traffic control was published by CNBC. The pilot, after the incident, said, “We’ve got the guy who tried to shut the engines down out of the cockpit and he doesn’t sound like he’s causing any issue in the back now. Other than that we want law enforcement as soon as we get on the ground and parked.”

Once the plane landed in Portland, Joseph David Emerson was arrested by law enforcement, according to the Daily Beast. The 44-year-old off-duty Alaska Airlines pilot is now facing 83 counts of attempted murder, 83 counts of reckless endangerment, and a count of endangering an aircraft. A possible motive has been reported on why the pilot would want to down a flight operated by his employer’s subsidiary, Horizon Air.

This wouldn’t be the first time an airline pilot has attempted to purposely crash a plane. Investigators believe that the co-pilot of Germanwings Flight 9525 intentionally crashed the flight in 2015, killing all 150 people onboard. Pilots occasionally commute on flights using the jump seats inside the cockpit. However, this recent incident might cause a shift in policy from carriers.

link: https://jalopnik.com/off-duty-alaska-airlines-pilot-tries-to-shut-off-engine-1850951141

    • assembly@lemmy.worldEnglish
      16·
      1 year ago

      I commented on another post of this but I am so confused as to motive. I mean if it was purely to down a plane, wouldn’t he have done it when he was flying it and not off duty? This is just weird.

      • IphtashuFitz@lemmy.worldEnglish
        10·
        1 year ago

        Probably figured that as just a passenger he would have been seen as just a victim if the plane had crashed, and all fault would have been pinned on the flight crew. So it wouldn’t be seen as him being suicidal but just a victim.

      • sygnius@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        This really is a weird story. If he was off-duty, how did he get access to the cockpit? Also, I could be wrong on this, but I remember reading somewhere that it’s not unheard of to turn off and on an engine mid-flight to restart it. Not sure if this was his intent, but it’s the only thing I could think of that sounds reasonable.