Pilot Suffers Mental Breakdown Mid-Flight

A stewardess helped make an emergency landing during an Air Canada flight to London from Toronto after a co-pilot suffered a mental breakdown.

The co-pilot had to be wrestled out of the cockpit, restrained and sedated during the incident on January 28.

The flight, carrying 146 passengers and nine crew members, had departed from Toronto's Pearson airport.

An Irish Air Accident Investigation Unit report said the co-pilot initially started talking in a "rambling and disjointed" manner as the aircraft reached the middle of the Atlantic, then refused to observe safety procedures,

The pilot concluded that his colleague was now so "belligerent and uncooperative" that he was unable to do his job.

The report stated the pilot then summoned several flight attendants to remove the co-pilot from the cockpit. One injured a wrist in the struggle.

Two doctors on board determined that the co-pilot was confused and disoriented and sedated him.

The pilot then asked flight attendants to find out if anyone of the passengers was a qualified pilot. When no one came forward, but one stewardess admitted she held a current commercial pilot's license but said her license for reading cockpit instruments had expired.

She helped land the aircraft safely at Shannon Airport in Ireland.

The report said: "The flight attendant provided useful assistance to the commander, who remarked in a statement to the investigation that she was 'not out of place' while occupying the right-hand seat."

The report did not identify any of the Air Canada crew by name. It also did not specify the psychiatric diagnosis for the co-pilot, who stayed at Irish psychiatric wards for 11 days before being flown by air ambulance back to Canada.

However the report said the co-pilot was a licensed veteran with more than 6,500 hours' flying time and had recently passed a medical examination.

(GK/JM)