For 39 minutes, nothing seemed unusual as Horizon Air Flight 2059 soared above the Pacific Northwest toward the Bay Area. Then suddenly, an off-duty Alaska Airlines pilot riding as a guest in the cockpit “jump-seat” threw off his headset and blurted out to the flight captain and first officer: “I’m not OK,” and had to be wrestled away from the controls.
Joseph David Emerson, 44, told investigators that he hadn’t slept in 40 hours, had been depressed, had just suffered through the death of his best friend and had tried psychedelic mushrooms for the first time only 48 hours earlier, according to state and federal court affidavits filed in Portland on Tuesday.
Then, he snapped — 31,000 feet in the sky with 83 other people, including 11 children, on board.
“I pulled both emergency shut off handles because I thought I was dreaming and I just wanna wake up.” he would later tell investigators.
The pilot grabbed Emerson’s wrists and the men “wrestled” for about 30 seconds, then Emerson “quickly settled down.”
The harrowing account in Tuesday’s court filings provided the first explanation for why the off-duty East Bay pilot with no history of safety violations tried to take over Sunday’s flight from Everett, Washington, to San Francisco.
The plane made an emergency landing in Portland, where officers arrested Emerson, 44, on 83 charges of attempted murder and reckless endangerment — one for each of the other people on the plane — and a charge of endangering an aircraft. He was arraigned in a brief court hearing Tuesday, where he said nothing and a not-guilty plea was entered on his behalf.
Federal authorities have since also charged Emerson with interfering with a flight crew that carries a sentence of up to 20 years if he’s convicted. Kevin Sonoff, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Oregon, said that the federal and state cases will “will continue on parallel tracks at least initially.”
Affidavits filed by Multnomah County Deputy District Attorney Anthony Dundon and by FBI Special Agent Tapara Simmons Jr. in support of the charges offered detailed accounts of the incident from the flight crew and Emerson’s conversations with Port of Portland police.
In his comments to police, Emerson denied taking any medication but said he “became depressed” — about six months ago according to the federal affidavit, and six years ago according to the state filing. Emerson told police and medical personnel he’d taken “magic mushrooms” about 48 hours before the incident on the plane, though an officer noted he “did not observe Emerson to be outwardly under the influence of intoxicants.” He told them it was his first time taking the psychedelic drug, the federal affidavit said.
Dr. Brian Anderson, assistant professor of psychiatry at the UCSF School of Medicine said that FDA-sanctioned studies have focused on synthetic psilocybin, and that the main effects from it generally wear off in about 6 hours. However, he cautioned that that figure could vary somewhat when people ingest natural psilocybin.
The cockpit incident and charges shocked friends and neighbors who knew Emerson as a safety-conscious pilot and a devoted family man.
Longtime neighbor Karen Yee was stunned hearing about the charges and affidavit because Emerson was “very friendly, always very upbeat.”
“He never seemed dismayed about anything,” Yee said Tuesday. “It’s shocking. My heart goes out to the family and hopefully he can get whatever help he needs.”
No one answered the door at Emerson’s home and family members didn’t respond to requests for comment. His lawyer and several family members seated in the courtroom for his hearing Tuesday declined to comment.
Deputy John Plock, a spokesman for the the Multnomah County Sheriff, said Emerson “gave some verbal indication that he wanted to harm or kill himself” around 5:30 a.m., about an hour after being booked, and that he is on suicide watch. He remains in custody without bail.
Sonoff said a hearing for Emerson on the federal charges would likely be scheduled for Thursday.
Alaska Airlines, which owns Horizon Air, said in a revised statement Monday evening that Emerson had joined Alaska Air Group as a Horizon first officer in August 2001. In June 2012, he left Horizon to join Virgin America as a pilot. Following Alaska’s acquisition of Virgin America in 2016, he became an Alaska Airlines first officer again and rose to captain in 2019.
“Throughout his career, Emerson completed his mandated FAA medical certifications in accordance with regulatory requirements, and at no point were his certifications denied, suspended or revoked,” Alaska Airlines said.
Ross “Rusty” Aimer, president of Aero Consulting Experts, said jump-seat accommodations are a professional courtesy extended to off-duty U.S. pilots so they can travel to and from where they live and the flights they are working. The flight’s pilot, or captain, must clear the off-duty pilot to join the flight, and to sit in the cockpit.
According to the federal affidavit, the flight 2059 pilot said he’d never met Emerson but that “there was zero indication of anything wrong” before the flight, and that Emerson engaged both pilots in “casual conversation about types of aircraft” and the weather.
That changed a little over a half hour into the flight, with flight tracking data showing the plane cruising about 520 mph at 31,000 feet, when Emerson suddenly threw his headset across the cockpit and said “I’m not okay,” then grabbed both the red engine shutoff handles. The pilots kept Emerson from pulling the handles all the way — had he done so, it would have turned “the aircraft into a glider within seconds” — and the plane began decelerating and dropping several thousand feet, making a sharp turn back toward Portland.
The pilots alerted flight attendants that Emerson was “losing it,” and they saw him “peacefully walking” toward the rear of the plane, saying he’d “just got kicked out of the flight deck.” At one point, he turned to an emergency exit door and tried to open it, but a flight attendant grabbed his hand to stop him.
When he reached the back of the plane, a flight attendant asked what she could do for him, and he clicked his wrists together and told her, “you need to cuff me right now or it’s going to be bad,” the state affidavit said.
They put him in a flight attendant seat, secured the seat belt and put his hands in flex cuffs. As the plane descended toward Portland, Emerson allegedly told flight attendants that he had “tried to kill everybody” and had “messed everything up.”
When police asked if he was trying to kill himself during the cockpit incident, he didn’t answer, but said that he was trying to wake up and didn’t feel like “this was real,” the state affidavit said.
“It seemed like the pilots weren’t paying attention to what was going on,” Emerson was quoted telling police in the federal affidavit. “They didn’t…it didn’t seem right. . . . Yah … I pulled both emergency shut off handles because I thought I was dreaming and I just wanna wake up.”
Emerson also told Port of Portland police “I’m admitting to what I did, I’m not fighting any charges you want to bring against me, guys.”
Aimer said that airline pilots are monitored for mental health. But there have been a few documented cases of anguished pilots deliberately crashing their planes. The co-pilot of a Germanwings jet crashed it in the French Alps in 2015 after practicing putting the plane into a dive, an EgyptAir copilot said to be distraught over workplace troubles crashed a jet into the Atlantic Ocean in 1999 and an off-duty FedEx pilot tried to hijack and crash a plane in 1994 but was subdued by crew and later convicted and sentenced to life in prison.
If you or someone you know is struggling with feelings of depression or suicidal thoughts, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline offers free, round-the-clock support, information and resources for help. Call or text the lifeline at 988, or see the 988lifeline.org website, where chat is available.
Bay Area News Group staff Rick Hurd and Veronica Martinez contributed to this story.