Cessna Caravan Emergency Landing, Passenger Hero Narrative
A passenger with no formal flying experience successfully landed a Cessna 208 Caravan at Palm Beach International Airport after the pilot became incapacitated. Air traffic controller Robert Morgan, a flight instructor, guided the passenger through the landing via radio and cell phone. Speculation arises regarding the passenger's potential prior experience with flight simulators and the unusual use of a cell phone for critical aviation instructions.
cessna caravan· palm beach· robert morgan· air traffic control· flight simulator· emergency landing
00:00 It's going down, going down man. Landing with no flying experience and broadcasting live from the heart of the Texas Hill Country here in FEMA Region number 6 in the morning everybody. I'm Adam Curry. And from Northern Silicon Valley where we're celebrating National Mental Health Awareness Day. I'm John C. Dvorak. Well that's groovy. We are of course the poster children for mental health awareness. Texas is showing prominently on the posters. What do you mean? We're insane in Texas? Is that what it says? Yeah, exactly. Mental awareness in Texas is bad? Mental health awareness. We have no awareness of mental health, is that it? Yeah, that's a known fact. What are you even asking me for?
01:02 So hey man, let's just start this off with something really weird and I saw you had clips that's why I'm gonna start it off. This passenger who landed the airplane with no flying experience? We're missing some of the story here. I have an Ask Adam question at the end of this. Okay, can we can we jump right into your first one sure play away? And then did you see this today an absolute nightmare in the air above Florida? That is the sound of a passenger who has no flying experience taking over control of a private airplane after the pilot had a medical emergency that plane Nose-diving toward the ground at one point until one of the two passengers on board gets behind those controls calls for help and
01:48 then safely lands the plane. Correspondent Brooke Schaefer is live in Florida for us tonight. So Brooke, the more that we hear about this story, the crazier and wilder it gets. Yeah, what a story Marnie. The FAA here even calling this a miracle. Miracle! Mid-flight that plane was actually even over the water when all of this happened. The pilot lost consciousness. So forced to land the plane was a package a guy who had never flown a plane before. A serious situation in the skies near Palm Beach. A desperate call to air traffic control from the passenger in this plane. Something was seriously wrong with his pilot.
02:32 Roger what's your position? What was the situation with the pilot? The pilot out. The passenger with no idea how to fly the plane. That's when the air traffic controller steps in. Roger, try to hold the wings level and see if you can start descending for me. Push forward on the controls and descend at a very slow rate.
03:08 I said I want you to start a slow turn to the north so the shoreline is going to be off your right side. Robert Morgan was on the other end of that call. He and his team printed out pictures of the plane's cockpit and from the air traffic control tower helped that passenger land the plane safely. Yeah, I know you have a second clip but I have some comments. We're all airs. When I've never heard this someone say I have no flying experience very very interesting you would say a number of things then also very novel in this case air traffic control instructed this never never flying never flying experienced person to descend to 5,000 feet so they could talk on the phone
04:03 on the cell phone. This is highly irregular. So we don't have any audio of the controller really helping this guy down. Most of that went through a cell phone call, which even at 5,000 feet, this is not, it's not a great idea if you want to have constant, I've used cell phones and airplanes and small airplanes before. It doesn't work really well at all. Well, the report that I had Has him going through the radio. A little bit. A little bit. And not the cell phone. It never mentions the cell phone. Huh. Most of this was done on the cell phone. That's odd. Well, this report doesn't say that. But I read the transcript and I listened to all the available audio so that's how I... and they went back and forth for at least a minute getting the number right.
04:51 Who recorded it? How do you get the two sides of the record? Oh, no, of the, when he was still on the radio, it was ATCLive.net. They record all that stuff. So that was recorded. Yeah, no, I'm talking about the cell phone call. We don't have the cell phone call. Oh, I thought you said you heard the cell phone call. No, the number. They were actually going back and forth for a minute, precious minutes, trying to get the guy's cell phone number. Clearly he knows how to use the radio. Clearly he knows how to do this. Again, that's not in this report, so I don't know anything about that. All right, so let's do your second one. I don't think I can see somebody say I have no flying experience. This guy had at minimum flight simulator experience. There's no doubt about it. I think everybody said Microsoft flight simulator. But I heard him talk, he said, hey, I can't figure out which nav I should be on. Anyone who says which nav I should be on has done something in the flight simulator.
05:45 No flying experience. Was that in the first clip? I didn't hear that either. No, but this is all on separate audio. Alright, well let's play the rest of this clip. Alright, as he's on the way in, I started to talk to him about how the brakes would work. Is he a hero? He is a hero. What he did is pretty incredible. Justin Hine is a pilot. He knows the air traffic controller on that call, Robert Morgan. Later in the day when I found out that somebody landed and the controller helped, I knew it was Robert Morgan right away because he's the only controller that I know in this area that's a pilot and with him being an instructor he's able to definitely teach him and know what he's doing to get down on the ground. And Marnie, get this, that air traffic controller even said he's never flown this specific plane
06:27 plane before. So really all of this working out as it did is a miracle. We know that pilot was taken to the hospital at this point we are still waiting on some official confirmation as far as how he is doing tonight. Marnie? Yeah that instructor even having a printout of the dashboard to understand the controls in the cockpit. Brooke, really incredible. All right thank you. So there it is. Not this particular kind of aircraft, but we really don't have any of that information because that was all done on the cell phone, which is highly unusual. Highly unusual. I don't think I've ever heard of this being done via a cell phone. But when you take into it... Do you have the Ask Adam for me? Because I can do that now if you want. I'm the guy in the plane. Wait. Ask Adam. All right, you're the guy in the plane. The passenger. I don't know how long this took, but...
07:24 After I land the plane do I get to log it? Absolutely, although that would have to be signed off by an instructor so well the instructor who's landed me could sign it off Yes, you could yes that would qualify as That would qualify. I don't know how long he was flying around that would qualify. Yes sure sure That was your question okay, so The tail number of this aircraft was November 333 Lima Delta. I mean, whenever I see these things and it's weird, I'm just like, oh, come on, man. There's too many threes. We don't really know about any of the passengers. We don't really know if this, and he was billed initially as a passenger pilot.
08:08 So it sounds like someone who might have had some flying lessons, maybe has done flight simulator, was sitting up front so he's not just a typical passenger, unless they had this caravan loaded. And this particular aircraft, I know a lot about, a Flonim, the Cessna caravan, its main function is cargo. It can haul a lot of cargo and you put some crappy-ass seats in there you can take a lot of you can I think you can take up to eight people with a crap load of cargo this has a special cargo bin underneath doesn't go very fast at all it's not the thing if you're island hopping and you've rented a plane it's not necessarily the one you want so there's really no information about other passengers we don't even know that what happened well okay so we don't know what happened to the pilot
08:54 This guy, you know, no interviews as far as I know further with him. He's just a hero and he can sail off into the night. I think this was a drug run. I seriously do. I think there was this was a drug run and that's why they had to get it off the radio, do it on the cell phone. The report is that this never flown before pilot wanted to land at a different airport. And they said, no, no, no, no, no. You should come over to International because you got the long runway. So this whole thing smells. Smells bad. Well, the pilot, at least when this report was made, was in the hospital, so they don't... Not the pilot, yeah, the pilot that passed out. Yeah, it could be. It could have been the pilot... Well, if you want to take it to that extreme, you want to fictionalize it. I would say it was a drug run. The thing was filled with, let's say, cocaine, and the pilot took a couple of toots while he was up there, and he had... And it was laced with fentanyl.
