An airliner co-pilot who suffered a mental breakdown mid-flight had to be wrestled out of the cockpit before a stewardess helped make an emergency landing. The Air Canada co-pilot was then restrained and sedated during the trip to London from Toronto, a probe found.
An Irish Air Accident Investigation Unit report said the airman initially started talking in a “rambling and disjointed” manner then refused to observe safety procedures.
The pilot concluded that his colleague was so “belligerent and uncooperative” that he could not do his job.
He called several flight attendants to remove the co-pilot before two doctors on board sedated him.
The pilot then asked if any passenger was a qualified pilot.
When no-one was found, one stewardess admitted she held a current commercial pilot’s licence but her qualifications for reading cockpit instruments had expired.
She helped land the aircraft safely at Shannon Airport in western Ireland.
Almost 150 passengers and nine crew members were on board the Boeing 767 during the incident in January.
The report did not identify any of the Air Canada crew by name.
Nor did it specify the psychiatric diagnosis for the co-pilot, who stayed at Irish mental wards for 11 days before being flown by air ambulance back to Canada.
But it said he was a licensed veteran with more than 6,500 hours’ flying time and had recently passed a medical examination. -Sky
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