Passenger Forced to Land Plane After Pilot Collapses

An inexperienced passenger was forced to land a plane as the pilot collapsed in the cockpit. The pilot later died.

The plane took off from a small airfield in Doncaster, England on Tuesday morning. The plane was carrying the pilot and the passenger. At about 6:20 p.m., the pilot made a distress call and became ill. He was so sick that he had to leave the passenger responsible to land the plane about 25 miles from where it took off. The passenger had never flown a plane. Two flight instructors on the ground had to guide the passenger as he tried to land the plane, the BBC reports.

"He made quite a good landing, actually. He didn't know the layout of the aeroplane. He didn't have lights on so he was absolutely flying blind as well," Roy Murray, one of the flight instructors told BBC. "I think he'd flown once before as a passenger but never flown an aeroplane before."

Murray says he did his best to make sure the passenger wouldn't panic while trying to land. He says that without their guidance, the man likely "would have just gone into the ground and that would have been the end of it". Murray said it was a fantastic feeling to help save the man's life.

The man was able to land the plane safely on his fourth attempt. It wasn't the smoothest landing though, witness Stuart Sykes told the BBC. "It came down with a bump, a bump, a bump, hit the front end down. I heard some crashing and it's come to a halt," he said.

Cheers rang out across the airport control room upon the landing. Police and fire crews were on scene as the airport had activated an emergency plan. Certain roads around the airport were closed and two incoming flights from Scotland and the Netherlands were delayed.

"The emergency was declared at 6.20pm by the pilot of a two-seater aircraft. Shortly afterwards he was taken ill and became unable to fly it and that responsibility then fell to his passenger," an airport spokesman said according to the Guardian. "Humberside international airport put into operation their emergency plan. The passenger flew over the airport a couple of times and then was talked down by two flight instructors and the emergency services were waiting for them when he landed safely."

Unfortunately the pilot who fell ill was pronounced dead on Tuesday night.