Flight deck audio reveals details on ex-Alaska Airlines pilot who tried to shut plane’s engines off mid-flight
Flight deck audio and police video are providing a new look into the night when off-duty airline pilot Joseph Emerson tried to turn off the engines of an Alaska Airlines regional jet while allegedly feeling the effects of so-called “magic mushrooms” he’d eaten two days earlier.
Video, obtained by CBS News from local prosecutors in Portland, Oregon, gives the first glimpse of airport security camera footage that shows police walking Emerson off the plane in handcuffs after the flight made an emergency landing in Portland in October 2023.
The prosecution’s files also contained flight deck audio of the moment the incident happened.
“I’m not OK,” Emerson says, which the pilot misheard, prompting him to ask, “You’re OK?”
Emerson repeats, “I’m not OK.”
The pilot asks what’s wrong, and after Emerson tells him he wants to go home. A struggle and profanity is then heard as the pilot asks, “Dude, what’s going on?!”
“Horizon, we need to make an emergency landing,” the now-out-of-breath pilot tells air traffic controllers. “We’ve got a jump seater just tried to shut our engines off. We need to go direct to Portland, now.”
A little later, the pilot tells air traffic control they were able to get Emerson out of the cockpit.
Asked back in July if he was trying to crash the plane, Emerson told CBS News, “No, no. I had no intention of crashing the actual airplane. I wanted to wake up. I was convinced I wasn’t going home to my wife and kids. It wasn’t reality.”
There were 83 other passengers and crew on board the plane. It was because of the full flight that Emerson ended up in the cockpit jumpseat. The handles he pulled are meant to cut off fuel in the event of a fire.
Emerson previously told CBS News he was in a “dream” or “dissociative state,” and thought pulling the handles would “wake me up.”
“It didn’t wake me up, right. It, I was in reality. I know that now,” he said. “It’s the most consequential three seconds of my life.”
CBS News also reviewed footage of Emerson’s ride in the back of a police cruiser after he was taken into custody. He stayed quiet for most of the roughly 20-minute drive, but at one point asks the officer, “Do you believe in forgiveness?”
“I want to be accountable. But am I gonna be forgiven for being so stupid?” he asks.
Emerson told CBS News earlier this year that at the time of the incident, he had been grieving the death of his best friend and turned first to alcohol to help before trying the psilocybin mushrooms for the first time.
He said he took mushrooms two days before the flight but, according to his attorneys, Emerson has hallucinogen persisting perception disorder, which made the effects of the psychedelic drug last for days instead of hours.
Emerson has pleaded guilty to a federal charge of interfering with a flight crew and separately pleaded no contest to state charges of endangering an aircraft and 83 counts of endangering another person. For the guilty plea, he was sentenced to time served, having spent 46 days in jail, and three years of supervised release. The other charges came with a sentence of five years of probation and time served.
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