Darren Harrison was on a flight home to his wife in Florida after a fishing trip in the Bahamas when things suddenly went awry. He soon found himself flying the aircraft after the pilot lost consciousness.
A flooring specialist for an interiors firm in Florida, Darren couldn’t wait to get home to see his wife, Britney, who was six months pregnant with the couple’s first child.
Darren wasn’t aboard a standard passenger jet for the flight home that day in May 2022, as he had boarded a Cessna 208. This type of aircraft has been around since the 1980s, and unlike typical jet airplanes, a Cessna 208 is a single-engine propeller-driven plane that has an operational ceiling of 25,000 feet.
On the flight to Florida that day, it was just Darren, another man, and the pilot of the plane. Mid-flight, the pilot told the men that he wasn’t feeling very well. Before the pilot could tell Darren what to do, he suddenly slumped over in his seat, unconscious.
According to People, as the plane was rapidly traveling across the choppy waters of the Atlantic Ocean, Darren crouched behind 64-year-old pilot Ken Allen, trying to wake him up. When he realized that if he didn’t step in and try to fly the plane at that very moment, it was very likely that he was going to die that day.
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With no pilot skills of his own, Darren thought of his pregnant wife at home and decided to reach over the body of the unconscious pilot and grab the control stick and slowly pull it back in hopes of stopping the nosedive that was taking place.
To hear all about how Darren was able to successfully land the airplane that day with the help of an air traffic controller, watch the full video story posted by Wonderbot.
