Pilot on Mushrooms.. The Nightmare on Alaska Airlines flight 2059

inside the cockpit of this aircraft a struggle is going on as the pilots are desperately trying to fight off a man who is trying to shut down the aircraft's engines what happened he tried to shut the engines down but the story that has led up to this terrifying ordeal is far more complex than you might think and has ramifications that should Ripple through the entire aviation industry I'm not okay I need to wake up today I will tell you a story about a crime and the tragedy and this story will point to A system that is broken and that will cause more tragedies unless it's fixed soon a quick warning this story will contain references to mental health issues and I will link to some helpful resources here in the description below it all happened on a cloudy afternoon on the 22nd of October 2023 at Everett panfield in Washington United States two pilots from Horizon Air were preparing for a flight which would bring them down towards San Francisco International Airport Autumn had finally come with the last few leaves still trying to hold on to the tree branches but on this day the winds were calm with the temperature hovering around 53° fhe or 12° CSUS a really really nice day to go flying the two pilots were going through their operations like on any other day whilst their three cabin crew members were preparing the cabin all of them completely unaware that this day would not turn out to be anywhere close to normal in the terminal building the passengers who were booked for the flight were getting ready to board the Embraer 175 that was waiting for them outside this aircraft only had 76 seats and on this day the aircraft was completely full something that wasn't uncommon on this particular route as the rest of the passengers were boarding a 44-year-old man in a dark sweater and suit pants presented himself to the gate crew he showed them his Alaska Airlines pilot badge and asked politely if he could get a jump seat down towards San Francisco the badge showed that he was in boing 737 Captain for Alaska Airlines and since Horizon Air is a wholly owned subsidiary to Alaska Airlines this type of request was completely routine a large number of airline pilots in the United States are not based where they're living meaning that the whole industry depends on the ability to hit a ride cost free to and from the Pilot's home bases without that ability the whole industry would grind to a screaming hold almost immediately now these jump seat flights are not done like in the movie Catch Me If You Can anymore there are strict FAA established procedures for when and how a person is accepted on board and these includes applying through an online system known as the cockpit access security system or Cass and then of course also asking the operating Pilots for permission before boarding the flight and this pilot was following all of these protocols he was coming back from a meet up with a group of friends outside Seattle who had gotten together to commemorate his best friend who had died a few years earlier it had been a really sad Affair which had affected him deeply and now he just wanted to get home to his wife and children who were waiting for him before he boarded the flight he sent a text message to his wife saying I just want to hold you now since the flight was completely full the only real place he could sit was either on the back yump seat with the flight attendant or in the cockpit and as any pilot would he chose to sit in the cockpit so he could chitchat a little bit with his colleagues there was a bit of a delay during the boarding so the flight which was scheduled to depart at 17:25 local time didn't start pushing until about 5 minutes off the schedule once the Embraer had started moving away from its stand all of the pre-flight procedures ran re really smoothly and at time 1743 the aircraft took off normally from Runway 34 left and started a left turn down towards the South once the sterile phase of the flight was completed the three Pilots started comparing some differences between the aircraft types that they were flying which is a very very typical call talk between pilots the aircraft was behaving normally and everything else was flowing just like on any other day but what the two operating Pilots didn't know was that a darkness of building up in the mind of their jump seating colleague a darkness that would soon show itself the aircraft they were flying the Embraer 175 is a fantastic little airliner with a very modern cockpit and on board systems it is powered by two General Electric cf34 turbofan engines and some of those engines internal systems specifically the fire suppression system is soon going to play an important role in this story in most modern aircraft there are several different fire detection and suppression systems on board covering everything from lavatories and cargo holds to the engines and the auxiliary power unit in the engin the fire detection system consists of two independent fire detection Loops which monitors the temperature around some of the key components inside of the engine if both of those Loops senses a temperature high enough to trigger a fire warning well then the fire alarm goes off in the cockpit a fire warning symbol can be seen on the engine instruments as well as several other warning indications those includes the related fire extinguisher handle located in the overhead panel which will illuminate red to show which engine is on fire if this happens in Flight the pilots need to First expeditiously verify what is going on which engine is involved and then execute memory items which are checklist items that has to be done by memory since they're time critical the pilot flying will concentrate on continuing to fly the aircraft and the pilot monitor ring will start executing the memory items by first disengaging the outter throttle verifying which endine is affected and then move the thrust level to idle selecting the start stop selector to stop and then pull the fire extinguisher handle when that handle is pulled it immediately closes the related Fuel and hydraulic shut off valves isolating the engine from these systems and it also closes the engine bleed a and cross bleed shut off valves the whole idea with this first movement of the handle is to isolate the engine and to shut it down hopefully then stopping the fire by doing so the next step is then to turn the handle and when that is done this blows off a tiny explosive charge next to the fire extinguishing bottles releasing the fire retardant into a pipe which leads to the affected engine once that is done the engine will likely not be able to be restarted which you obviously wouldn't really want to be in case there is a fire in it but the first step when the handle is only pulled that can be reversed by pushing the handle back in again which would then reopen the affected valves now in the boing 737 that iFly since these handles have the ability to shut the engines down they're locked by a solenoid when a fire is not detected they can still be pulled up and that can be done in case a QR checklist for example asked for it but that will require pushing an override button to release the handles from the lock but curiously that's not the case on the EMB its handles can actually be pulled at any time and that will soon become important they were eventually cleared to climb to flight Level 310 which was their planned Cruise level and once they leveled off the pilots started completing their Cruise procedures as the aircraft passed in over Oregon these procedures would have included some paperwork and verification of fuel and pressurization levels but generally it tends to be the most relaxed part of most flights up until this point none of the pilots had noticed that their colleague on the jump seat had had started to squirm around a bit in his seat and was starting to look more and more stressed and agitated and then suddenly about 10 minutes after the aircraft had reached its Cruise level he suddenly and without warning threw his headset forward into the cockpit and called out I'm not okay within seconds he launched up from his seat reaching for the two fire extinguisher handles that were placed right above where he was sitting he put his hands on them and then pulled them out stop let's hold here for a moment and look at this really bizarre situation because this doesn't seem to make any kind of sense does it before I tell you what happened next let's back the tape a bit and go back way back in time to see why this loving husband and father of two was now about to shut down the engines of an airliner at 31,000 ft risking the lives of himself and everyone on board the jump seating Pilot's name was Joe and Joe knew already from the fifth grade that all he wanted to do was to become an airline pilot he was absolutely fascinated with Aviation and everything around it so when his parents gave him a test lesson as a present they really sealed the deal this was what he was going to do with the rest of his life back then he was also relentlessly teased in school by some of the kids and to help him deal with that trauma he got into contact with a therapist for the first time which helped him tremendously just like most people who have been bitten by the aviation Jan spent most of his free time trying to come up with ways to earn money which he could spend toward flying lessons he was really industrious and even put ads into the local newspaper letting people know that he could come over and mow their lawns and do other type of chores just to earn money to pay for his training in short he did everything he could to reach his goal and all of this sounds exactly like my own story and how I got into Aviation he eventually started his flight training when he was just 15 got his first license at 17 and after he had finished College his dream came true when he landed his first commercial airline job flying for Horizon Air he worked for them for a while and then changed over to Virgin America and after they had been bought by Alaska Airlines he eventually Rose to the rank of Captain and later even instructor initially on the Airbus Fleet during this time he also met his wife and started a family where he eventually became the father of two and he was universally seen both by his family and colleagues as a well balanced calm and level-headed person someone you could trust and who wanted everyone well his career was going great and the fact that he had managed to become an instructor meant that he could stay more days at home with his family which he felt was super important again that sounds exactly like me everything was going fine for Joe until in 2018 his best friend who was also the best man at his wedding suddenly died during a work trip to Hawaii yo helped bring his body back back home and this sudden shock of grief hit him really really hard so hard in fact that he decided to go back into therapy again his therapist soon recognized that the problems Joel was now dealing with went beyond just normal grief and started to look more like the early onsets of clinical depression this was likely something that he had been struggling with Without Really realizing it for a long time at that point depression or major depressive disorder is one of the most common mental health issues that we have and it will affect between 5 and 177% of all people out there at some point during our lives the therapist told Joe that she couldn't give him a formal diagnosis but that she felt that he would do well in talking to a doctor who could give him that diagnosis and maybe even prescribe some anti-depressant medication but here we get to the problem after he had heard this Joe did some quick research which showed that any use of anti depressant would likely mean that he would temporarily lose his medical certificate and be grounded for an unknown period of time Aviation authorities around the world including the FAA have for many decades before been using the better safe than sorry attitude when it comes a mental illness and have put very stringent medical requirements in force to keep these types of issues out of the cockpit this has meant that once diagnosed with a mental disorder especially if there's medication involved they rolled back to the court bit have traditionally been very long and complicated with several Hoops that the pilots would have to jump through including sometimes long waiting times for evaluations on top of of course the already very heavy stigma that mental disorders carry and even though this has likely improved during the last few years with the FAA even approving some milder anti-depressants for Pilots back in 2010 the stigma is still very much real and with this in mind there is a strong tendency for Pilots to avoid seeking help even even when it's obvious that they should now I know that there are likely quite a few of you out there thinking good I don't want any depressed pilots flying my aircraft and we need stricter rules but whilst that is a very understandable first reaction it is also an extremely dangerous One Pilots are human beings just like everybody else and even though we have to go through stringent evaluations before we get our jobs that doesn't mean that we are less susceptible to mental issues later on during our lives a loss of a child or a spouse extreme Financial stresses or indeed a constant work pressure and changes in sleep rhythms can all be triggers for depression and even though it is not more common among Pilots than other groups I don't think that it's more rare either so with that in mind what do you think happens when a pilot start feeling that help is probably needed but at the same time he or she also knows that seeking that help might mean a substantial loss of income or even permanent loss of license and career yeah the problems might well be hidden swept on the rug and possibly never properly dealt with or in the worst case scenario the pilot might even start self-medicating to get some relief and the stricter the rules become the more these problems would be driven underground meaning that more pilots would perfectly treatable initial issues might not get the help they need leading to even worse future symptoms so this really puts the focus on how the aviation authorities out there deal with this problem going forward for this to get any better they have to convince the pilots that they can and should seek help when needed and that there is a true and believable way back to the cockpit if they do now of course there will be psychological problems that might be deemed so bad that they are completely incompatible with the pilot job but they are in the vast minority here and the only way to find those individuals is for Pilots to trust the system enough to seek help in the first place the first officer who flew German Wings flight 9525 straight into a mountain in France back in 2015 had been diagnosed with depression very early on in his career and then he was allowed back with a clear restriction in his certificate saying if this depression ever comes back he would permanently lose his medical license if you get a restriction like that in your license do you think that you would ever officially look for help again or do you think that you would try to hide it now there's plenty more details in that story that I might cover in a separate video but my message remains really clear stricter rules does not solve the core problem here destigmatizing mental health issues and creating well-working peer support programs like American Airlines project wingman for example must in my view be introduced in every Airline on top of that working contracts must of course allow for Pilots to recover properly was still receiving a living pay before the return to the cockpit and that's sadly not always the case right now now the rest of this story should serve as an example to why these points are so important you see Yo after having been scared off by his research into what might happen if he were to use medication decided not to go to a doctor but instead to try more intense therapy he also sometimes self-medicated with alcohol when he had a couple of days off but never in connection with his flying duties he was really careful with anything that had to do with his job and he always followed all of the rules and regulations out there his medical certificate was therefore kept valid throughout his difficulties with no trace of any issues being noticed by either his friends nor his colleagues his wife had at some point tried to get him to see a doctor to get some help after he had confided in her but he had then explained that he didn't want to risk their livelihood and his dream by doing so so instead he just soldiered on and during the year leading up to the incident his workload kept steadily Rising with the increase in passenger travel after the pandemic plus the fact that he had to change over to the Boeing Fleet which meant a new typew rating course who kept him away from his family for most of the summer he was also appointed safety representative in the San Francisco base with the role of trying to increase overall safety awareness among the crews including to get them to file more safety reports and then in the end of October he did the faithful trip together with a group of friends up to Washington state for a memorial get together for his best friend something that they had started doing the previous year and wanted to make into a tradition during the Friday night as the group of friends were sitting together and having a couple of drinks someone in the group suggested that they should try psychedelic mushrooms Joo was very hesitant since he knew the rules regarding drug use he would normally even avoid secondhand marijuana smoke since it might show up in the r random drug tests that Airlines do and he never used any medication at all if he could avoid it but his friends convinced him that the mushrooms were completely safe and that they wouldn't appear in any type of drug test on top of that he was not scheduled to fly for another 6 days and the effect of the mushrooms should only last for a few hours so this shouldn't be any kind of problem with all of that in mind and in his overall state of grief and sadness he took the decision to try a bit of the mushrooms which was of course a major lapse of judgment now the active ingredients in psychedelic mushrooms mainly psybin and syosin have lately showed a lot of Promise in clinical trials for treatment of among other things depression but during those same trials some worrying signs have also started appearing those consist mainly in the fact that while very small controlled amounts of these substances might be helpful for some they might also trigger full-blown Psych otic episodes in people who have certain pre-existing psychological disorders now I want to step in here and make it absolutely clear that any type of uncontrolled drug use outside the advice of a medical professional and the knowledge of your aeromedical examiner is completely incompatible with flying activities it obviously doesn't matter at all if they will appear in a drug screening or not soon after Joe had tried the mushroom he started feeling really uneasy he felt that his friends were talking about him behind his back and that he was somehow in danger and couldn't trust them he spent the whole night in that state of paranoia without without being able to sleep at all and he got more and more convinced that he was actually stuck in a bad dream that he couldn't wake up from his mind kept playing up horrifying memories from his childhood and he got an overwhelming feeling that his wife and children weren't safe and that he needed to get back to them he later describ that feeling as going through Purgatory a living hell the Saturday passed without his condition improving and he spent another agonizing night toward Sunday again without being able to get any sleep so this was the state that he found himself in when his friends drove him to the airport on the Sunday afternoon for his flight back to San Francisco in the car ride he couldn't make sense of the GPS or how the car was moving and when he got to the airport he felt that the gate Personnel weren't following procedures and that the boarding of the passengers were all wrong and didn't make any kind of sense just like a fever Nightmare on the outside it didn't show any of this but on the inside he was screaming that he just wanted to wake up from this when he finally boarded the aircraft and sat down in the cockpit he talked to his colleagues but still got that nagging feeling that something was very wrong he felt that he had met one of the pilots before but just could not know where he had done so so and he even started questioning if these two really were pilots at all off to takeoff he found their reactions to the aircraft encountering some light turbulence perplexing and his feeling of being in a nightmare just grew stronger and stronger until finally he decided to make himself wake up and what is it that normally makes you wake up from a nightmare when Joe had thrown his headset across the cockpit and started talking about not feeling well it had obviously alerted the two pilots of the fact something was very very wrong whated they now looked back just in time to see how Joe reached up for the fire extinguishing handles and pulled them both out this immediately shut off the fuel and hydraulics to both engines but luckily there was still enough fuel left in the lines to keep the engines running for a few seconds so the engines didn't immediately flame out since we don't have the final report we don't know if it was the captain or first officer who reacted first but one of them immediately charged at yo grabbing his wrists while simultaneously pushing the two handles back in again this restored the fuel flow to the engines so that solved the immediate threat but Joe who was still determined to wake himself up from this escalating nightmare continued to struggle for around 30 seconds to try and reach the handles again before he suddenly got temporarily pulled back into reality stood up and then left the cockpit the whole situation took around 90 seconds and as soon as Joe had left the pilots secured the flight deck door and then called in what had just happened to our traffic control whenever a hijacking attempt or really any disruptive passenger event happens which threatens the aircraft or someone on board the severity is measured in a scale from 1 to four where four is the most serious meaning a breach of the cockpit so that's what the pilots now reported to the controller together with a request to immediately divert to Portland and have law enforcement waiting for them when they arrived but this ordeal was far from over least of all for Joe as he left the cockpit he walked down the middle aisle and looked at all of the family sitting there blissfully unaware of what had just happened in the cockpit he thought about all the times that he had been traveling with his own family and that started the feeling of this all being a bad dream to come creeping back again but before he completely succumbed to it he turned over and told the flight attendant you need to cough me right now or this is going to be bad the flight attendant did what was told and cuffed his hands with some Flex cuff that they had on board but she did so with his hands in front of him so he could still move and use his hands a little bit remember he was not aggressive at all and this must have been a really confusing situation for the cabin crew who had still not been briefed about what had just happened in the cockpit as he was sitting down on the back crew jump seat Joe soon grabbed a full jug of coffee from the machine and started drinking straight out of it obviously still trying to make himself wake up from this dream which was certainly not getting any better the cabin crew handled this in a very professional manner they took the port coffee away and then tried to talk to him and calm him down as the aircra was now descending down toward Portland the pilots made a PA to the passengers explaining first that they had to divert dealing with an emergency but then clarifying that it was a medical emergency which in essence it actually was during The Descent Joe kept asking the flight DET Tena if this was real or a nightmare and he then took up his phone sending off a text message to his friends explaining that he was having a mental breakdown and that he had tried to crash the aircraft he also sent another one to his wife which just said that he'd made a big mistake at one point in The Descent he also reached over toward watch the emergency exit with the intent of trying to get it open so he could jump out he thought that doing so would definitely wake him up but the crew managed to stop him by gently removing his hands and continuing to engage him in conversation really really impressive work about 20 minutes after the incident started the aircraft landed safely on Runway 28 left in Portland where they taxied into gate Bravo 7 and shut down their engines as soon as the doors were opened armed law enforcement entered the aircraft and escorted Joe out with most of the passengers still not having any idea of the drama that had just unfolded even at this point Joe was still not convinced that what he was experiencing was real so he continued to ask the police whether it was or not when the arresting officer confirmed that yeah it was y responded that if this is real and all of that was real then I have done something to me that is unfathomable yo was brought into custody and it took until the following Wednesday 5 days after he had eaten that mushroom before he really started to come to his senses again he is now facing 83 counts of but attempted murder and reckless endangerment there's no question that what he did was wrong and I am in no way defending it but Joe never meant to hurt anyone as he was convinced that he was just dreaming and he was clearly having a severe mental episode the way I see it this serves as a perfect example of what can happen when mental issues are not being treated at an early stage in a different scenario one in which he immediately got in contact with a doctor when he felt the onset of early depression and where the fear of losing his job because of it never entered his mind do you think that this would have happened then in a statement joa said that I'm horrified that those actions put myself and others at risk he also added the crew got Del a situation there is no manual or checklist for and they did an exemplary job keeping both me and the rest of the people on that plane safe these quotes comes from an interview he did in jail and they formed part of an excellent New York Times article by Mike Baker which I have linked to Below in that interview yo wowed to be as transparent as possible about what had happened so that we can all learn from this terrible ordeal he will likely never see the inside of a cockpit again but in a very ironic twist this incident and the way his honesty is highlighting the shortcoming in the aviation industry this might well end up saving more lives than he ever endangered on that day as an immediate result the FAA announced that they are forming a pilot mental health committee with the explicit goal of finding ways to break down the barriers that prevents pilots from reporting mental health issues and they also hope to use this group to help to improve Pathways back into the cockpit after a pilot has suffered a mental health episode now what we Pilots need to do is to eventually trust that these regulator actions are effective start working with the system and admit when we're not feeling well we are not superhuman we do get ill just like everyone else both in the body and the mind and we need to remove the stigma that currently surrounds it now the importance of monitoring and maintaining your mental health just cannot be overstated and if you are working in a profession where it's hard to find time for Quality mental health care or you feel like your situation just doesn't allow it well then let me tell you about today's sponsor better help better help takes away a lot of the traditional barriers to seeking therapy by making the access super simple what you do is you just use my link here below you fill in a short questionnaire and then you'll be match with a licensed mental health care professional within 48 hours which you can then talk to directly from the comfort of your own home or wherever it feels convenient and safe now I have used them myself to build up my self-confidence and work on productivity and the fact that I could do so via video call made it super relaxed and convenient but you can also reach them via messaging or phone calls I know that taking that first step towards feeling better is often really really hard but better help was created exactly to help you with this I've actually received emails from followers who have used the service and have praised the help that they have gotten and if you want to do the same just go to betterhelp.com Mentor pilot and get 10% off your first month this could be the most important step that you've taken in a long time for both yourself and for those around you thank you better help for sponsoring this video and remember that you can also support the work that we're doing here on the channel by joining my awesome patreon crew or sending a super thanks with the dollar sign button here Below have an absolutely fantastic day and I'll see you next time bye-bye

Channel: Mentour Pilot

Views: 1,497,796

Keywords: true crime, storytelling, mentour pilot, aviation stories, trending, viral, mentour, full episode, Mental health, crime stories, aviation incidents, final report, aviation final report, Mentour Pilot crash, Pilot shutting down engines, embraer, magic mushrooms, magic mushrooms pilot

Id: 988j2-4CdgM

Length: 29min 59sec (1799 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 06 2024