It’s the dream story for many a pilot: The commercial pilot in the left seat becomes incapacitated and you have to take over and save the day. It happened in real life earlier this month, except the person taking over wasn’t a pilot, and controller Robert Morgan had to talk him down for a landing at Palm Beach. In this long interview by Juan Browne on the Blancolirio YouTube channel, Morgan explains how he did it. One surprise not revealed in the general media coverage is that Morgan did the whole thing from the TRACON, not the tower. Passenger Darren Harrison landed the Cessna Caravan without a hitch. In fact, he did so well some thought he had prior aviation experience. NBC did an interview with Harrison that adds detail at the expense of a little cringiness.
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Darrell Harrison, welcome to the wonderful world of aviation!
Controller Robert Morgan, congratulations on a job well done.
This guy had more flight experience than most new minted private pilots… we know that now.
He had been flying for a very long time, and just because it wasn’t logged as instruction, doesn’t mean he wasn’t given ‘instruction’.
It turns out that he had extensive right seat time in his friend’s a/c although not as a licensed pilot. ..