Alaska Airlines pilot who took mushrooms and tried to cut power on flight sentenced

PORTLAND, Ore. (CN) — A former Alaska Airlines pilot who attempted to shut off a plane’s engine while it was in flight was sentenced to three years of court supervision, a federal judge ruled on Monday.

Joseph David Emerson was off-duty and riding as a passenger in the cockpit jump-seat of a Horizon Air flight from Washington state to San Francisco on an October flight in 2023 when he said “I’m not okay” and reached up to grab two red fire handles and pull them down, federal officials described in the plea agreement.

When pulled, the handles deploy the built-in fire extinguisher system, which shuts off the fuel supply to the engines. One of the pilots grabbed Emerson’s wrists and briefly struggled with Emerson before Emerson gave up and left the cockpit.

The second pilot declared an in-flight emergency and diverted the flight to Portland. He told officials that Emerson had not successfully pulled the red fire handles — an action that would have shut down the hydraulics and cut fuel to the engines.

When the flight landed, Emerson told police he had not slept for two days and that he felt dehydrated and tired. He also said that he was “mentally … in crisis” and had been depressed since his friend died six years earlier.

He told police that he pulled the emergency shut-off handles because he thought he was dreaming. An investigation revealed that Emerson had taken psychedelic mushrooms for the first time “in a social setting amongst friends.”

The former pilot entered a guilty plea to a federal charge of interfering with a flight crew in September.

In his sentencing memo, Emerson requested credit for time served and probation. He explained that, at the time of the incident, he was suffering from a disorder that caused him to reexperience perceptual disturbances associated with hallucinogens. Since it was his first time taking the drug, he was unaware he had such a condition, and it caused him to become “completely detached from reality” for several days.

Federal prosecutors credited the actions of the on-duty pilots for taking control during Emerson’s “self-inflicted drug-induced psychosis.”

“It was only through the heroic actions of the flight crew, who were able to physically restrain the defendant and restore normal operations of the aircraft, that no lives were lost that day,” the government wrote in its sentencing memo. “Actions have consequences.”

The government recommended Emerson be sentenced to 12 months in prison, followed by a three-year period of supervised release.

A pre-sentence report from federal officers recommended a lighter sentence of time served with three years of supervised release and six months of home detention.

U.S. District Judge Amy Baggio, a Joe Biden appointee, chose to credit his time served and ordered three years of supervised release.

Emerson spent 46 days in custody, and when he returned to California, he founded a nonprofit called Clear Skies Ahead to speak to aviation professionals about health care avoidance.

In state court, Emerson pleaded no contest to each of the 84 counts against him in September — 83 counts of recklessly endangering another person and one felony count of endangering an aircraft.

Multnomah County Circuit Court Judge Cheryl Albrecht sentenced Emerson to credit for time served and imposed almost $60,000 in restitution, 664 hours of community service and five years of formal probation. As part of his probation for the state charges, he cannot come within 25 feet of an operable airplane.

The former Alaska Airlines employee, who had been a pilot since 2001, recognized that his actions endangered 84 people and called his conduct “unfathomable.”