A former Alaska Airlines pilot who tried to turn off a plane’s engine mid-flight ‘while high on magic mushrooms’ has reached a plea agreement with prosecutors.
Joseph Emerson, 46, was off-duty and sitting in the jump seat in the cockpit of a Horizon Air plane to San Francisco when he tried to shut off the engines’ fuel supply, police said.
His lawyer Noah Horst said the pilot made a deal because he wants to take responsibility for his actions for the 2023 incident and hopes to avoid further time behind bars.
Horst declined to discuss details of the agreements ahead of change-of-plea hearings his client faces Friday in state and federal court in Oregon.
Emerson was subdued by the flight crew and the plane was diverted to Portland, Oregon, where it landed safely with more than 80 people on board.
According to charging documents, Emerson told Port of Portland police following his arrest that he had been struggling with depression, that a friend had recently died and that he had taken psychedelic mushrooms about 48 hours before he attempted to cut the engines.
He also said he had not slept in more than 40 hours, according to the document.
Emerson was charged in federal court with interfering with a flight crew. A state indictment in Oregon separately charged him with 83 counts of endangering another person and one count of endangering an aircraft.
Joseph Emerson, 46, was off-duty and sitting in the jump seat in the cockpit of a Horizon Air plane to San Francisco in 2023 when he tried to shut off the engines’ fuel supply. He is pictured in 2023
Emerson was subdued by the flight crew and the plane was diverted to Portland , Oregon
Joseph David Emerson, back, appears in Multnomah County Circuit Court for an indictment hearing in Portland, Ore., on Dec. 7, 2023
He previously pleaded not guilty to all the charges, but on Friday was expected to plead guilty to the federal charge and no-contest to the state charge, which carries the same legal effect as a guilty plea.
Emerson was released from custody in December 2023 pending trial, with requirements that he undergo mental health services, stay off drugs and alcohol and keep away from aircraft. In the meantime, he has founded a nonprofit focused on pilot mental health.
The pilot and his wife appeared on Good Morning America, where he revealed that he was an alcoholic at the time of the flight.
‘I’m better for it which is kind of a weird thing to say but I am really better for all of us,’ he said, saying he’s had more time with his kids, and that the event saved his marriage.
The averted disaster renewed attention on cockpit safety and the mental fitness of those allowed in them.
The father-of-two had taken psychedelic mushrooms days earlier while on a trip with friends to remember his best friend Scott, a pilot who died years ago.
Despite not feeling himself, he accepted Flight 2059 from Everett, Washington, to San Francisco.
During the flight, Emerson believed he was having a bad dream that he needed to wake up from.
In an interview with Good Morning America , he called it the ‘biggest mistake’ and ‘worst 30 seconds’ of his life
Emerson described the moment he reached for the engine shut-off controls, believing it would ‘wake him up’ from what he thought was a hallucination
‘That’s kind of where I flung off my headset, and I was fully convinced this isn’t real and I’m not going home,’ Emerson recounted.
‘And then, as the pilots didn’t react to my completely abnormal behavior in a way that I thought would be consistent with reality, that is when I was like, this isn’t real. I need to wake up.’
He claimed he was still experiencing the drug’s effects when he boarded the flight as an off-duty pilot and became convinced his surroundings weren’t real.
‘There was a feeling of being trapped, like, “Am I trapped in this airplane and now I’ll never go home?”‘ he recalled.
Emerson described the moment he reached for the engine shut-off controls, believing it would ‘wake him up’ from what he thought was a hallucination.
‘There are two red handles in front of my face,’ Emerson continued. ‘And thinking that I was going to wake up, thinking this is my way to get out of this non-real reality, I reached up and I grabbed them, and I pulled the levers.’
The father-of-two had taken psychedelic mushrooms days earlier while on a trip with friends to remember his best friend Scott, a pilot who died years ago
‘What I thought is, “This is going to wake me up”,’ Emerson said. ‘I know what those levers do in a real airplane and I need to wake up from this. You know, it’s 30 seconds of my life that I wish I could change, and I can’t.’
He said he was brought back to reality when the crew stopped him.
‘It was really the pilot’s physical touch on my hand,’ he said. ‘Both pilots grabbed my hands where I kind of stopped and I had that moment, which I’ll just say I view this moment as a gift.’
The pilot’s wife Sarah described her horror at learning her husband faced 83 attempted murder charges – one for each person on board.
Those charges were ultimately downgraded.
