Off-duty pilot who 'tried to crash' Alaska Airlines plane with 83 onboard while high on magic mushrooms speaks out for first time

Joseph David Emerson is awaiting trial after being arrested for attempting to crash an Alaska Airlines flight on 22 October 2023, while in the cockpit. Following the incident, the 44-year-old was charged with 83 counts of attempted murder and one count of endangering an aircraft on the flight that was travelling to San Francisco, California, from Everett, Washington in the US.

Almost a year on from the incident, Emerson has now spoken to ABC News about how things unfolded from his perspective. Two days before the flight was set to depart, Emerson said he and his friends took psychedelic mushrooms, a Class A drug that can cause hallucinations, in commemoration of his best friend's death who had died six years earlier.

However, he said that the effects lasted days after taking them and he didn't feel right when travelling to the airport for his flight. The pilot said he could only think about being at home with his family, with fears setting in that he would never make it back as he took his seat in the cockpit of the jet.

He said to ABC News: "There was a feeling of being trapped, like, 'Am I trapped in this airplane and now I'll never go home?”. He claims he started to believe that what he was seeing wasn't real, convincing himself that he was not actually going home as his friend sent him a text saying to do some breathing exercises to calm down.

He said his phone read the text in his ear, pushing him off the edge: "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. And then, as the pilots didn't react to my completely abnormal behaviour 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”.

The off-duty pilot recalled: "There are two red handles in front of my face, 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."

“It turned out that these were the engine shut-off controls, which would have put everyone onboard at danger of death.” He claimed: "What I thought is, 'This is going to wake me up'.

"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."

Luckily, the pilots pulled his hands away while Emerson said that “the pilot's physical touch” snapped him out of it, as he became aware that it was all real. Shortly after though, he then went back to hallucinating, revealing: "At some point I thought maybe this isn't real, and maybe I can wake myself up by just jumping out, like that freefall feeling that you have."

Emerson grabbed the cabin door lever, attempting to pull it open before a flight attendant stopped him by putting her hand on his. He text his wife during the flight, declaring: "I made a big mistake."

His wife, Sarah Emerson, replied: "What's up? Are you ok?”. "I'm not," Emerson responded.

He quickly asked the flight attendant to handcuff him before he did any more harm. Emerson was taken into custody when the plane landed, spending 45 days behind bars before being granted bond.

The jail physician told him that he had suffered from a condition called hallucinogen persisting perception disorder (HPPD), which can cause a first-time user of psychedelics to suffer from persistent visual hallucinations or perception issues for several days afterward. Though he is no longer facing murder charges, Emerson is now facing over 80 state and federal charges, which include 83 counts of reckless endangerment after prosecutors reduced the charges in December.