The Alaska Airlines pilot who flipped in mid-air was afraid to report depression, his wife said

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by Jorge Fitz Gibbon

An Alaska Airlines pilot who twice tried to bring down an overcrowded passenger flight during a magic mushroom meltdown refused to disclose information about his mental health because he feared he would be grounded, a report said.

Joseph Emerson, 44, was suffering from severe depression before the bizarre October incident. Episode 22 He’s on a flight to San Francisco, but he tells his wife he can’t afford to deal with the airline, according to… Oregon Public Radio.

“I was like, ‘Maybe you should talk to someone,'” Emerson’s wife, Sarah Stritch, told the outlet.

“Then he said, ‘Sarah, I can’t be unemployed,'” she recalls her husband telling her. “We have to pay the mortgage. If I go to do that, I have to jump through all these other hoops…and we can’t afford to do that.

The veteran pilot was restrained during the flight between Everett, Washington, and San Francisco, after trying to cut the engines and rush to open the emergency exit mid-flight, authorities said.

He later told police he had eaten psychedelic mushrooms before the trip.

Emerson was sitting in the cockpit of an Alaska Airlines flight on Horizons Air as a passenger — a courtesy extended to off-duty pilots when they fly on their respective airlines.

The Federal Aviation Administration, which licenses and regulates pilots in the United States, allows them to self-report any mental or physical health problems – but pulls them from the cockpit when they do.

Pilots are then required to undergo extensive screening before they are allowed to fly again, which experts say acts as a deterrent for them to be honest about any issues they may be dealing with.

“It’s not an easy process for them to get back into the cockpit,” says the doctor. Brent Blue, a senior aviation medical examiner who works with pilots, told Oregon Public Radio.

“They will have to undergo these evaluations by a psychiatrist and a neuropsychologist to do that,” he said. “This is the pilot basically taking responsibility and saying, ‘I’m not willing to fly because of my sadness or whatever.’

Pilots can apply for short-term disability and, after six months, long-term disability — but furlough pay is usually about 50% of their salary, although the rate varies depending on the airline.

Stritch said her husband had struggled emotionally since the death of a close friend — who served as best man at the couple’s wedding — more than five years ago, and he was returning from a trip with mutual friends when he engaged in strange behavior on the plane. . .

According to 2016 Study by the National Library of Medicine12.6% of commercial airline pilots reported some level of depression, and more than 4% reported suicidal thoughts.