Crew dragged AC co-pilot off jet at Shannon after mid-air scare
 

http://www.independent.ie/national-n...e-1276356.html

MORE than a hundred passengers aboard an Air Canada flight from Toronto to London were forced to divert to Shannon yesterday after the co-pilot suffered what appeared to be a nervous breakdown in mid-air.

Officials at Shannon Airport last night confirmed that the male co-pilot was admitted to the psychiatric unit of the Ennis General Hospital in Co Clare yesterday after he was forcibly taken off the flight by fellow crew members and an off-duty member of the Canadian Armed Forces who assisted in restraining him.

Air Canada flight AC848, en route from Toronto's Pearson International Airport to London Heathrow, was diverted to Shannon with less than an hour to go before reaching its intended destination after the co-pilot began "acting in a peculiar manner and was talking loudly to himself," during the transatlantic crossing, according to aviation sources.

The Boeing 767-333 series jet, carrying 149 passengers, including three infants, landed safely at Shannon shortly before 8am yesterday where a medical doctor and ambulance crew were waiting to attend to the co-pilot.

Stunned passengers, some of whom are believed to have witnessed the bizarre scene, were taken to local hotels to await a replacement cabin crew in order to continue their journey on to London.

I saw that article too -- amazing that it was only an 8 hour delay. I wonder what really happened?

I was on that flight and it mostly happened as described in the article. It was quite an experience! He was being restrained in 12A and the entire mini-cabin could here the whole thing. Not for delicate ears. The soldier and the doctors (who were passengers) were great.

Quick correction, though... There were no hotels. We were given 15E vouchers for sandwiches at lunch and then just waited around hoping for information. They ended up flying a 767 to deliver a new crew - I don't know how they are going to get that back :).

I was so delayed and exhausted that I ended up staying at a hotel in Manchester instead of making it all the way home. At least I got some HHonors points out of it :).

Dr. PITUK

air canada diversion to Shannon
 

Hello Dr PITUK

I am trying to report on this story. May I ring you?
many thanks

Echoes of the JAL DC-8 that landed in the San Francisco bay...


(I guess AC may have some explaining to do on this one.)

your report made it onto CBC news this morning
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2008/0...a-copilot.html (in the video, right side)

they also manage to try and discredit you... "it may be a false claim":P

nancy durham calling dr pituk
 

hi i'm the cbc reporter who mentioned your blog. i reported that my blogger contact told me you appeared to be legit, but we all need to verify our sources. i see you're on line now - may i call you? thanks very much
nancy

Maybe the crew should carry Tasers;) - the Western Canadian solution

An Air Canada co-pilot who fell ill in the cockpit during a flight from Toronto to London has been admitted to an Irish hospital for psychiatric care, according to a report from the Irish Independent.

The pilot of Flight 848 was forced to make an emergency landing in Shannon, Ireland, at about 8 a.m. local time Monday after his co-pilot suffered what appeared to be a nervous breakdown, the report said.

"We were told that there was to be an emergency landing due to a crew person taking ill," Shannon Airport Authority spokesman Eugene Pratt said Tuesday.

Pratt said the airport did not dispatch any emergency crews to treat the 149 passengers on board but paramedics and a doctor were called in for the co-pilot. He did not disclose the identity of the co-pilot and would not confirm where he had been taken for treatment.

The passengers, however, were transferred to a local hotel to wait for another crew to arrive prior to boarding another flight to London.

Pratt added that Shannon, which is about 200 kilometres east of Dublin, often sees emergency landings due to its geographical location.

"If you look at where we're located, and considering the amount of aviation that comes over the Atlantic, there are times that a warning light comes on or a heart attack happens on board and planes have to make an emergency landing," he said. "Very often, it's Shannon. It's not an infrequent occurrence."

The original flight left Toronto's Pearson International Airport just after 8 p.m. Sunday.

The passengers finally arrived at their destination, London's Heathrow Airport, around 4 p.m. local time, about eight hours behind schedule, Pratt said.

An Air Canada spokesman could not be reached for comment Tuesday morning.

painintheuk: check the professional pilots website. You are mentioned in post # 16

http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthread.php?t=310807

Could have been worse. He could have taken control of the aircraft and dived it into the ocean, just like that Air Egypt plane several years ago!

Thank GOD he wasn't in the cockpit at the time of going bonkers ! ^:rolleyes:

Ms. Durham also succeeds in mangling the name of this website, from which she sources the sole eyewitness account of her piece, and incorrectly refers to it as a "blog", all in less than three minutes of air time.

Edward R. Murrow she ain't.

It wasn't really though. . . There was a whole interview with someone from Shannon airport.

to dr Pituk
 

hi sorry, i'm back now

Quite right; I clarified my comment.

If you want really piss-poor reporting. This is from the OP's quoted article.

I share your frustration with this sort of reporting though. Especially in the television media, I think its the shift from polished, fully-sourced, in-depth reports to 24 hour news. I'm only thankful that that the CBC hasn't sunk to the level of CNN or Fox, where they just sit around saying whatever pops into their heads in order to fill the time. It's more "conversation journalism" then traditional reportage.

Speaking of unchecked facts, isn't the Air Canada spokesperson's first name Angela?

Agreed. And yes, it is Angela Mah who is the AC spokesperson.

Dr. Pituk,
My name is Allison Hanes and I am a reporter with the National Post newspaper in Toronto. I would like to speak with you about your harrowing experience aboard the Air Canada flight.
Please send me an email to let me know where I may reach you. I invite anyone else on the flight to contact me as well.
Best,
Allison
[email protected]

. . . . and here's the National Post. Good to see they've already decided on the story beforehand.:rolleyes:

I'm starting to wonder if this thread is to becoming a clearing house for journalists. Journo's there is a PM function BTW that use can use to contact others.

Attention Reporters
 

This site is NOT a blog for the person you are trying to reach.

Please contact them by Private Message.

Simon
Moderator - AC

Sad to see how low so-called journalists have sunk.

I suggest that anyone contacting these "reporters" ask for financial compensation in exchange for your stories of this "harrowing" :rolleyes: experience. After all, they are going to make money without really earning it.

Just goes to show, people prefer a "harrowing" story to a "heartbreaking" one ;)

Back to the discussion.....

This post on pprune.org is an interesting one on medical conditions that mimic psychiatric illness:

"As a physician, I would just like to remind everyone that there are plenty of medical conditions that can mimic psychiatric illness and cause bizarre behaviour such as metabolic encephalopathy due to diabetes, liver disease, kidney disease etc., infectious causes such as encephalitis, brain tumors or temporal lobe seizures.

I am surprised that the chap was taken directly to a psych facility without metabolic and organic causes being excluded."

Rather foolish comment, IMO. He was taken to an acute psychiatric unit of a general hospital, where he would be further evaluated for drugs, metabolic disorders etc. This happens all the time.

I won't post more about this, but I would just like to point out that it wasn't harrowing to me or the people that I spoke with, in large part because the crew (and the volunteers for that matter) all handled it so well. They were calm and professional throughout. There were also almost no complaints from customers who just went with the flow (except the odd FT-type compensation discussion :D).

I really hope that the person who was ill recovers quickly.

Thanks

Dr. PITUK

Looks like "The Lazy Journalist's Plane Story Generator" might be helpful here:

www.radans.net/jens/planestory.html

;)

Needless to say I think this pilot's in-flight career is over... will probably be flying a desk or teaching sims from now on.

In case anyone thinks that post #14 in that thread is newsworthy, it is not. And, for the record, the pilot in Airplane is Captain Clarence Oveur, played by Peter Graves.

The bad press for AC never ends! It seems that every week they are involved in a national (or intertnational) incident.

This is nothing that doesn't happen in any profession. Kind of hard to blame AC for this isn't it?

Sean tells the story on the CBC
 

CBC voices text version:
Canadian passenger Seàn Finucane told CBC News that the co-pilot started to act distraught about an hour before the flight carrying 146 passengers was scheduled to land at London's Heathrow Airport.

"He was yelling loudly at times," Finucane said, explaining that the co-pilot's voice was clear and he didn't sound drunk.

"When they tried to put his shoes on later, for example, he swore and threatened people … He was swearing and asking for God, and was very, very distressed."

Actually, I don't have any problem with journalists coming here to ask for more details - I don't see it any different then them calling up an eyewitness to ask for an interview. Nancy Durham has been around a long time, but clearly has no idea about internet bulletin boards or how to navigate them. Giving out her cell number on a public forum is asking for trouble (crank calls)...

Requests for more info are fine, but all subsequent communication should clearly be done as a PM...

Don't think it's AC's fault. Hard for them to predict that one of their pilots is going to have a nervous breakdown.

For sure, but I can hear those Easterners tsk-tsking and clucking: I told you, Martha, that no-good AC is trouble. That's why we signed the petition.

AC was blamed for their response to those EZE terminal riots. AC was blamed for the turbulance incident.

In fact I have it on good word that AC is responsible for at least 35% of runny noses and stubbed toes. :rolleyes:

Especially when they, and pretty much all airlines, work hard to convince pilots to conceal anything that might be a mental illness. Failure to do so equals termination.

Well, I think it's proper that the onus should be on the airlines to screen pilots for anything of the kind. And it's not like there are no precedents.

someone mentinoed the Egyptair crash. Then there was the Silkair crash. Older than that, the JAL DC-8 that landed in the San Francisco bay. At least in the latter case, the airline did take quite a bit of flak.

Anyway, on one hand, sure it's hjard for the airlines to monitor the mental health of pilots. On the other hand, as a customer, I still think that it's only fair that I expect them to be successful at it.

And if bullying tactics (as mentioned by the quoted article) don't work, then maybe there are other ways?

But bottom line: I deal with the airlines. I have no contractual relationship with airlines employees. So from my vantage point the airline has to be the party responsible for not having noticed a problem earlier.

http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/n...e3b008&k=14039

OTTAWA - Air Canada has launched an informal investigation in the emergency diversion of a London-bound flight after the co-pilot fell ill somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean, with one passenger saying the pilot was having a breakdown and calling for God.

Sean Finucane said the co-pilot was bound by restraints and carried into the cabin.

"He was very, very distraught. He was yelling loudly," he told CBC.

His voice was clear, he didn't sound like he was drunk or anything, but he was swearing and asking for God," he said in an interview from England.

"He specifically said he wants to talk to God."

The airline's spokesman, Peter Fitzpatrick, declined Tuesday to divulge any details about the pilot's medical condition, including confirming media reports that the pilot has been taken to a psychiatric hospital in Shannon, Ireland.

"I'm sure they're looking into this," Fitzpatrick said. "We are always evaluating everything we do."_

Flight 848 from Toronto, a Boeing 767, was forced to make an emergency landing in Ireland at about 8 a.m. local time Monday after the co-pilot suffered what an Irish newspaper described as a nervous breakdown.

But Fitzpatrick refused to provide any other details of the incident, including the co-pilot's name or how long he had worked with Air Canada.

"This is an issue around one of our employee's health," he said. "We're quite limited in what we can say. There are privacy concerns."

He insisted, however, that the 146 passengers on board were never in danger.

"There was never any question of safety," he said. "We have standard operating procedures in place to deal with these situations and at no time was the safety of anybody compromised."

Shannon Airport Authority spokesman Eugene Pratt confirmed that the airport did not dispatch emergency crews for the passengers, but paramedics and a doctor were called in for the co-pilot. The passengers were transferred to a local hotel to wait for another crew before boarding another flight to London.

Pratt added that Shannon, which is about 200 kilometres west of Dublin, often sees emergency landings due to its geographical location.

"If you look at where we're located, and considering the amount of aviation that comes over the Atlantic, there are times that a warning light comes on or a heart attack happens on board and planes have to make an emergency landing," he said. "Very often, it's Shannon. It's not an infrequent occurrence."

The original flight left Toronto's Pearson International Airport just after 8 p.m. Sunday.

The passengers finally arrived at their destination, London's Heathrow Airport, around 4 p.m. local time Monday, about eight hours behind schedule