The Alaska Airlines pilot who twice tried to shoot down a flight full of passengers during a meltdown caused by a magic mushroom refused to disclose information about his mental health because he feared he would be suspended, according to a report.
Joseph Emerson, 44, was deeply depressed before the bizarre Oct. 22 episode on a flight to San Francisco, but he told his wife he couldn’t afford to confess to the airline, according to Oregon Public Broadcasting.
“I thought, ‘Maybe you should talk to someone,'” Emerson’s wife, Sarah Stretch, told the outlet.
“And then he said to me, ‘Sarah, I can’t be out of a job,’” she remembers her husband telling her. “’We have to pay a mortgage. If I do that, I have to jump through all these other hoops… and we can’t afford to do that.’”
The veteran pilot had to be restrained on the flight between Everett, Washington, and San Francisco after trying to shut down the engines and lunge to open an emergency exit mid-flight, authorities said.
He later told police he had taken psychedelic mushrooms before the flight.
Alaska Airlines pilot Joseph Emerson told his wife, Sarah Stretch, that he was afraid to report his depression to the airline because he feared he would be suspended. On October 22 he went crazy on a flight and tried to shoot it down twice. Joseph Emerson / Facebook Joseph Emerson, an Alaska Airlines pilot, was grounded on an Oct. 22 flight after he attempted to shut down the plane’s engines and lunged for an emergency exit while in the air. He told his wife that he was depressed but that he was afraid to tell his boss. Courtesy of Aubrey Gavello
Emerson was sitting in the cockpit of Alaska Airlines’ Horizons Air flight as a passenger, a courtesy extended to off-duty pilots when traveling on their airlines.
The Federal Aviation Administration, which licenses and regulates the conduct of pilots in the U.S., allows them to self-report any physical or mental health problems but removes them from the cockpit when they do so.
Pilots must then undergo a thorough evaluation before being cleared to fly again, which experts say serves as a deterrent to them being honest about any problems they may have.
“It’s not an easy process for them to get back into the cockpit,” Dr. Brent Blue, a senior aviation medical examiner who works with pilots, told Oregon Public Broadcasting.
“They will have to go through these evaluations by a psychiatrist and a neuropsychologist to do that,” he said. “This is a pilot who is basically responsible and says, ‘I’m not ready to fly because of my pain or whatever.’
Joseph Emerson, an off-duty Alaska Airlines pilot, was charged with 83 counts of attempted murder after authorities said he tried to shoot down a plane twice during a mad flight on Oct. 22. He told his wife that he suffered from depression. The Alaskan Airlines flight from Everett, Washington to San Francisco on October 22 had to make an unscheduled landing in Oregon after off-duty pilot Joseph Emerson derailed and attempted to shut down the engines and open a door mid-air. Getty Images
Pilots can apply for short-term disability and, after six months, long-term disability, but pay during leave is typically around 50% of their salary, although the rate varies by airline.
Stretch said her husband had struggled emotionally since the death of a close friend, who was the couple’s best man, more than five years ago, and was returning from a trip with mutual friends when he exhibited strange behavior on the flight. .
According to a 2016 study by the National Library of Medicine, 12.6% of commercial airline pilots reported some level of depression and more than 4% reported suicidal thoughts.
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Source: vtt.edu.vn