“I’ve got a serious situation here. My pilot has gone incoherent, and I have no idea how to fly the airplane,” said a passenger on a Cessna 208 to the controller tower Tuesday. The flight was coming from the Bahamas and was twenty miles east of Boca Raton when the distress call went in.
There were only two passengers on the plane, neither of whom have been identified, when their pilot became sick and was unable to continue flying. Guided by Robert Morgan, the passenger was able to safely land the small plane in Palm Beach despite his initial inability to use the navigation system. Morgan had never flown a Cessna 208 himself, and when the plane safely landed, he hugged the passenger who he had guided in the landing. When the plane reached ground, air traffic control took over and completed the landing safely.
No one was injured in the emergency landing, but one person was taken to the nearest hospital, and one can assume that it was the pilot who became so sick that he was incoherent and could not fly the plane. It’s a truly incredible story and one that probably shouldn’t have ended up in such a happy way. Thankfully, though, it did.
Information from The New York Times was used to write this story.