The Alaska Airlines pilot who nearly killed 83 people when he tried to crash a passenger plane to “escape a bad nightmare” while traveling on magic mushrooms has given a shockingly candid interview in which he says the incident improved his life.
Joseph Emerson admits he was confused about reality when he flew on the plane in October. He had been on a drugged-out trip with friends when he took off despite being high and sleep-deprived with 83 people on board.
During the flight, Emerson, convinced he was dreaming, placed his hand on the red lever which, if pulled, would have shut down the plane’s engines and probably everyone on board.
The co-pilots detained him and handcuffed him for the remainder of the flight. He now awaits sentencing on 80 counts of reckless endangerment.
On Friday, he and his wife appeared in Good morning America to describe how the impending disaster had improved their lives. He also revealed that he was an alcoholic at the time of the flight.
“I’m better for it, which is a weird thing to say, but I’m really better for all of us,” she said, adding that she’s had more time with her children and that the event saved her marriage.
Joseph Emerson, 44, tried to shut down the engines of an Alaska Airlines flight last October while under the influence of magic mushrooms.
Emerson spent 45 days in jail. He still faces more than 80 state and federal charges, including reckless endangerment. He has pleaded not guilty to those charges.
“At the end of the day, I accept responsibility for the decisions I made,” he said.
‘What I hope is that not only the totality of the 30 seconds of the event, but the totality of my experience, is taken into account when society judges me.
The father of two had taken psychedelic mushrooms days earlier during a trip with friends to remember his best friend Scott, a pilot who died six years ago.
Despite not feeling well, he accepted flight 2059 from Everett, Washington, to San Francisco.
During the flight, Emerson believed he was having a bad nightmare from which he needed to wake up.
“At that point I took off my headphones and became completely convinced that this wasn’t real and I wasn’t going to come home,” Emerson said.
“And then, because the pilots didn’t react to my completely abnormal behavior in a way that I thought would be consistent with reality, that’s when I thought: this isn’t real. I need to wake up.”
He claimed he was still experiencing the effects of the drug when he boarded the flight as an off-duty pilot and became convinced his surroundings were not real.
“There was a feeling of being trapped, like, ‘I’m stuck on this plane and now I’m never going to go home?'” he recalled.
In an interview with Good Morning America, he calls it the “biggest mistake” and the “worst 30 seconds” of his life.
Emerson described reaching for the engine shutdown controls, believing that would “wake him up” from what he thought was a hallucination.
“There are two red handles in front of my face,” Emerson continued. “And thinking I was going to wake up, thinking this was my way out of this unreal reality, I reached out and grabbed them and pulled the levers.”
“My thought was, ‘This is going to wake me up,'” Emerson said. “I know what those levers do on a real airplane, and I need to wake up from this. That’s 30 seconds of my life that I wish I could change, and I can’t.”
He said he came back to reality when the crew stopped him.
“It was really the physical touch of the pilot on my hand,” he said. “Both pilots grabbed my hands when I stopped and I had that moment, which I will just say I consider a gift.”
Emerson described reaching for the engine shutdown controls, believing that would “wake him up” from what he thought was a hallucination.
The pilot’s wife, Sarah (right), described her horror at learning her husband was facing 83 charges of attempted murder, one for each person on board.
“I watch the pilots react to the difficult situation I just put before them and I see them react in a very professional manner,” Emerson said of the pilots. “I heard them talking about me and I said, ‘Do you want me to get out of the cockpit?'”
But Emerson’s strange behavior continued after he was taken back to the cabin.
Emerson said he then grabbed a lever that operated the cockpit door.
“At some point I thought maybe this isn’t real and maybe I could wake up just by jumping, like that free-falling feeling you get,” he said.
‘I put my hand on the lever, I didn’t operate the lever.’
A flight attendant then intervened and stopped him.
“She put her hand on mine again and with that human touch, I was free. I think that was the moment when I said, ‘I don’t understand what’s real, I don’t understand what’s real.'”
Emerson, who spent 45 days in jail, still faces more than 80 state and federal charges, including reckless endangerment.
While his future as a pilot remains uncertain, Emerson says he is grateful to the crew and passengers for their calm response to his actions.
Emerson then requested to be restrained and handcuffed for the remainder of the flight.
“I basically asked to be restrained because I knew that if this was real, I had already done enough damage,” she said. “I thought, ‘Let’s hold me down until I can get the help I need.’ That’s what I was really hoping for when I got off this plane, to get the help I needed.”
The pilot’s wife, Sarah, described her horror at learning her husband was facing 83 charges of attempted murder, one for each person on board.
Those charges have now been lowered.
“I walked over to the window and told him I was looking for my husband and he just looked on the computer and typed some stuff in and then nonchalantly told me the charges and I lost it,” Sarah told the outlet.
“I screamed and collapsed, I almost fell,” she added. “They grabbed me and threw me to the ground because I know what that means. I was in total shock.”
But ten months later, the couple say the incident has actually strengthened their relationship and given Emerson a new lease on life.
He said he would love to fly again, but “in the end, if I’m not meant to fly again, I’m not going to fly again.”
“What I did was something we didn’t train for and they handled it fantastically. It’s really a result of their professionalism and the way they handled the situation that I’m alive today,” he said.
“Of course I want to fly again. It would be totally disingenuous if I said no,” he said. “I don’t know in what capacity I will fly again and I don’t know if I will be offered that opportunity.”
“But in the end, if I’m not meant to fly again, I’m not going to fly again.”
Passengers on the plane have yet to react to his comments.
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