Off-duty pilot who ‘tried to crash plane’ with 83 on board after taking mushrooms explained what happened
An off-duty pilot that once 'tried to crash a plane' after he had taken mushrooms has explained what was going through his head during the ordeal.
On 22 October 2023, Joseph David Emerson attempted to crash Alaska Airlines Flight 2059 while in the cockpit.
The pilot has since been arrested and charged with 83 counts of attempted murder, as well as one count of endangering an aircraft. He is currently awaiting trial.
Flight 2059 was heading to San Francisco, California, from Everett, Washington in the USA.
Advert
Just last year, a year on from the horrific event, Emerson spoke to ABC News about what he was thinking at the time.
Two days prior to the flight's departure, the Alaska Airlines pilot admitted that he, along with some friends, took psychedelic mushrooms.
Also known as shrooms, the Class A drug can cause hallucinations and distort reality. Emerson said that they did it in memory of his friend's death, who had passed six years earlier.
However, he said that the effects lasted days after taking them, and he didn't feel right when travelling to the airport for his flight.
The pilot said he could only think about being at home with his family, with fears setting in that he would never make it back as he took his seat in the cockpit of the jet.
He said to ABC News: "There was a feeling of being trapped, like, 'Am I trapped in this airplane and now I'll never go home?'," Emerson told ABC News, in an interview near his home in California.
He claims he started to believe that what he was seeing wasn't real, convincing himself that he was not actually going home, as his friend sent him a text saying to do some breathing exercises to calm down.
He said his phone read the text in his ear, pushing him off the edge: "That's kind of where I flung off my headset, and I was fully convinced this isn't real and I'm not going home.
"And then, as the pilots didn't react to my completely abnormal behavior in a way that I thought would be consistent with reality, that is when I was like, this isn't real. I need to wake up," he claimed.
The next 30 seconds were where the problems began.
The off-duty pilot recalled: "There are two red handles in front of my face.
"And thinking that I was going to wake up, thinking this is my way to get out of this non-real reality, I reached up and I grabbed them, and I pulled the levers."
It turned out that these were the engine shut-off controls, which would have put everyone onboard at danger of death.
"What I thought is, 'This is going to wake me up'," he said.
"I know what those levers do in a real airplane and I need to wake up from this. You know, it's 30 seconds of my life that I wish I could change, and I can't."
Luckily, the pilots pulled his hands away, bewildered by his behaviour, while Emerson said that 'the pilot's physical touch' snapped him out of it, as he became aware that it was all real.
Speaking of luck, his actions didn't cause any danger, and the engines continued to operate normally. The pilots booted him out of the cockpit, and he drank directly from a coffee pot and sat in the flight attendant's jump seat.
Shortly after though, he then went back to hallucinating, revealing: "At some point I thought maybe this isn't real, and maybe I can wake myself up by just jumping out, like that freefall feeling that you have."
And just like that, Emerson grabbed the cabin door lever, attempting to pull it open, before a flight attendant stopped him by putting her hand on his, again waking him out of the trip and making him aware that it was all real.
He texted his wife during the flight, declaring: "I made a big mistake."
His wife, Sarah Emerson, replied: "What's up? Are you ok?"
"I'm not," Emerson responded.
He quickly asked the flight attendant to handcuff him before he did any more harm, hoping to get help when the plane landed.
Emerson was taken into custody when the plane landed, spending 45 days behind bars before being granted bond. It took a full four days from the day he took mushrooms to fully recover and return to normal.
The jail physician told him that he had suffered from a condition called hallucinogen persisting perception disorder (HPPD), which can cause a first-time user of psychedelics to suffer from persistent visual hallucinations or perception issues for several days afterward.
Though he is no longer facing murder charges, Emerson is now facing over 80 state and federal charges, which include 83 counts of reckless endangerment after prosecutors reduced the charges in December.
The pilot is currently awaiting trial, which was originally meant to be in the autumn of 2024.
Joshua Nair