The captain of an Air Canada Express flight had to be restrained by crew members and passengers for 40 minutes after suffering what was described as a seizure by witnesses. The pilot was taken to Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston after the “terrifying” incident on a Q400 headed from Newark to Halifax on Wednesday in which the captain was wrestled out of the flight deck. The FO declared an emergency and landed at Boston Logan Airport about 2 p.m. The aircraft stopped on the runway where the flight was met by first responders. The captain was loaded on a stretcher and taken by ambulance to the hospital.
Passengers told various news outlets that the plane made a series of abrupt maneuvers before a major commotion erupted on the flight deck. “One of the flight attendants entered the cockpit frantically and a few moments later, he was dragging one of the pilots out of the cockpit onto the aisle way of the airplane,” passenger Rodney MccDonald told ABC News. Before that, he said the aircraft suddenly “swerved” to the right. “The moment the plane swerved, I knew something was wrong because it was not turbulence,” he said. McDonald said the pilot wasn’t violent but “was not in control of his faculties” and had to be held down. The plane had to be towed to the gate where the 61 passengers waited five hours for the airline to get a crew to Boston to complete the flight. AvBrief contributor Les Abend provided some context and some reassurance for viewers of the Today Show on Thursday morning.
Single pilot airline ops … yeeaaahhh … right! NOT for me. Great job, SIC.
Wise man once say: “Two is one and one is none”
Larry is right on. Imagine 60+ passengers in back and Garmin Autoland up front…. It would probably work OK, but half the passengers would end up in the hospital with anxiety attacks.
Sure about that? I’d say 90% of pax is pleasently unconcerned about what or who flies the plane as long as the tickets are cheap.
… and as long as neither one eats the fish.
On the other hand, no humans in the cockpit – no one to be restrained. Bring it on for airliners, I say.
Ok you go first, tech bro. ‘Self-driving’ cars killing peiple in their houses not enough?
How about GPS jamming during an engine out approach to a rural airport?
Your automated bro gonna refuse a takeoff when it sees another airplane rolling on a crossing runway after an ATC f*ckup?
Etc.
Kudos to Les Abend. I’m glad to see the Today Show using knowledgeable aviation commentators.
Well Jason, if I am riding in a single pilot flown aircraft, I’m the pilot. All commercial air travel has become pretty
much miserable. I actually worry more about the air traffic controllers. Those poor folks are worked nearly to death.
HAL 9000 would save the day
I’m sorry Dave, but I’m afraid I can’t do that.
Dave’s not here, man.
Poor guy. Hope he is ok. But will need another career.
If a computer can not keep a WAYMO out of wet concrete nor a tesla from becoming confused by emergency vehicle lights then how will it fly an airplane ? And it will fly an airplane into the ground over a failed air data sensor? News Flash. Two pilots were never enough, just as we have seen than 2 engines are not always enough. Pilots are more important than engines. If this emergency had occurred in hard IMC we would have another no survivors hull loss.
Nah… Just about any well trained instrument pilot can fly solo in hard IMC (once getting the seized pilot out of the cockpit. Oh, and I’m not talking about civilian trained GA pilots.
Aircraft are limited to those type certificated with 9 passenger seats or less, Operations are limited to the United States, Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean, No Category II or Category III instrument approach operations are allowed. Standard Part 135 As a certificate holder’s business evolves, they ma..
THEREFORE, you are betting on 100% pilot function , which is impossible, to operate with a crew of 2
from FAA.gov
The Q400 is not certificated for single pilot operation. this is for a reason. This is the point. Redundancy becomes now zero.
” civilian trained GA pilots.”
Inaccurate and offensive. Pilots aren’t more proficient just because the Pentagon is paying your fuel bill…
I have flown with more than one civilian trained instrument pilot and the difference is noticeable. It’s not who paid the bill, it’s the level and duration of the training. Having said that, I can say the same about some military pilots that I’ve flown with. I have found that those who flew crewed aircraft to be less proficient than those who flew single seat.
Just because you or anyone else is offended by direct observation does not make that observation inaccurate.
I flew over 1300 hours of day and night 135 freight and pax, in piston twins and Merlins in all kinds of sh*t weather all by myself as a civilian trained GA pilot before going on to 121 widebodies.
So f*ck off.
I did single for the last 30 years of my career without a hitch until company policy started forcing me to have a copilot. That’s when the problems started. And these hypocrites still won’t admit that the vaccines they forced pilots to take are killing and maiming hundreds of pilots, many while at the flight controls. Seizures and blood flow blockages of every variety are now documented and court cases are being won, just like the class action at United because they forced pilots to take experimental drugs and called them a vaccine. By the way, the FAA says that it is illegal to take experimental drugs like the COVID MRNA injection. It is a violation of the law.
When a person resorts to such vulgar language and insults to try to make a point, it is certain that the reasoning is unsound. Without fail.
Wow. I guess you’re not one of the “some”.
https://www.fox6now.com/news/driver-removes-road-closed-barrier-gets-stuck-concrete.amp
https://www.cleveland19.com/2025/09/15/garfield-heights-man-whose-car-was-t-boned-by-ambulance-plans-sue-city/
Metric
Human Drivers
True Autonomous (Waymo)
Police-reported crashes
~4.7 per million miles
~2.1 per million miles
Injury crashes
~2.8 per million miles
~0.6 per million miles
Serious injury crashes
Baseline
Roughly 80–90% lower
This is clever, but where did these stats come from? Even if they are true, ( anybody can post numbers , like when the politicians claim that “crime is down in our area” … oh, really? great! )
Personally I will not turn my life over to a computer.
cada chango a su mecate
It’s not “clever”, it’s an argument based on measurable data rather than anecdotes or emotion.
Humans do things like stop, get out, move a “Road Closed” sign, get back in, and then drive into wet concrete. That’s a series of conscious decisions.
Waymo isn’t perfect, and no one is claiming it is. The relevant question is whether it’s safer overall. The available data compares crashes and injuries per mile driven, and so far it indicates Waymo performs better than human drivers on those metrics. Peer-reviewed research has found substantially lower rates of injury crashes and police-reported crashes compared with matched human driving.
If you have data showing that Waymo is less safe per mile than human drivers, I’d be interested in seeing it. If not, then we’re comparing evidence to anecdotes.
The human eye has about 15-16 degrees of Clear Vision, the rest is peripheral and unreliable due to eyesight conditions, glare, eyeglasses, hair, hoodies, auto pillars and aircraft structures, etc.
My ’26 Model Y can ‘see’ 360 degrees at all times using the AI supercomputer, GPS and the neural network of 11 Billion miles of beta data – ‘driving’ on FSD has taken me over 8000 miles with only parking choices that needed intervention.
Dozens of road hazards avoided, distracted drivers and kids on bikes at night coming up from behind leaving me wondering why we didn’t turn because he bolted up from the dark at my 7 o’clock to cross the unprotected turn to my left, etc.
I now can feel completely confident to ‘drive’ at night and during other scenarios like bad weather.
Best retirement power tool ever.
It’s going to take some time for the changes to apply to aviation but it will come and be pervasive, limited only by our resistance to it. It’s already saving lives on the road and will do so in the air, too.
Self driving AI cars have lost control in parking lots, hit construction workers in work zones, gone crazy with passengers on board and a host of other very dangerous behaviors just within the last week. Anyone who puts their brain in park and lets a computer determine their destiny doesn’t have enough good judgement to be called a certified pilot. And besides, if the technology is so great, (it’s not), then why bother certifying pilots anyway. People who trust computers and AI with their life really do have their head up and locked.
I wish I could have said that better, but I cant. 😊
You’re only looking at one side of the equation.
Yes, autonomous vehicles have had incidents. No one is saying they are perfect. But in the last week, how many injuries and fatalities were caused by human drivers compared to autonomous vehicles, especially on a per-mile basis?
That is the actual comparison.
Human drivers will stop their car, get out, move a “Road Closed” sign, get back in, and drive through wet concrete. I can point to hundreds of videos of human drivers hitting light poles, barriers, buildings, and other objects in nearly empty parking lots.
So pointing to isolated autonomous-vehicle incidents does not prove humans are safer. It only proves autonomous vehicles are not perfect.
The question is not whether autonomous vehicles ever fail. The question is whether they fail less often, and less severely, than human drivers per mile driven.
Maybe you should compare drone crash statistics with piloted aircraft statistics to get some clarity.
Lets do that:
FAA data from 2024 shows piloted GA had 1.23 fatalities per flight hour.
The FAA does not publish a formal rate of drone fatalities per flight hour because the accidental third-party fatality rate for small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (sUAS) is statistically zero.
Well, that seems pretty high to me. Let’s see now. I’ve got almost 19000 hours with no accidents and most of it single pilot. So if we multiply 19000 x 1.23 that = 23,370 fatal accidents I would have had statistically speaking during my career. I don’t know Robert. That doesn’t sound quite right to me. But then again, my math skills might be a bit weak.
You seem to be treating a population statistic as though it predicts the outcome for one individual. That’s not how statistics work.
If you disagree with the accident rate, your disagreement is with the FAA’s data and the methodology used to calculate it and not with the comparison between piloted and unpiloted aircraft.
No one is claiming that 19,000 hours means you were “supposed” to have thousands of accidents. That’s a misunderstanding of how statistical averages and risk are applied across large populations.
Correction:
FAA data from 2024 shows piloted GA had 1.23 fatalities per 100,000 flight hours.
Some of these uninformed comments on FSD and also vaccines are just more evidence of the lack of critical thinking skills on complex issues by some, blocked by agenda-driven bias.
Change can be very hard. Commercial aviation will eventually be dominated by AI software and robotics, on the flight deck, in the cabin, at the gate and in the towers. China is already showing the way.
The public will eventually trust the system, despite the outliers shouting from the sidelines. The growth is exponential and assured for those who can see. Greed, power, and human limitations will propel the new paradigm forward.
So sit back and enjoy the ride, if you dare.
I was on that flight with my entire family. The crew was calling for anyone with medical training but on such a small plane there wasn’t anyone. It was terrifying.