Pilot breaks his silence months after he tried to shut down plane’s engines while high on mushrooms

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Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

The off-duty pilot who attempted to shut down a plane’s engines mid-flight after taking psychedelic mushrooms, says that his marriage has improved following the incident and that he hopes to fly again one day.

Speaking about last October’s incident, Joseph Emerson took responsibility for his “unfathomable” actions but said he hoped that sharing his story would help the conversation around pilots’ mental health.

During the incident on 22 October, Emerson was sitting in the cockpit’s jump seat during a flight from Seattle to San Francisco and allegedly attempted to shut off the plane’s engines by pulling the engine fire handles.

He later also attempted to pull an emergency exit lever, but was stopped by flight crew and eventually restrained. Emerson was indicted on 84 charges relating to the incident but avoided being indicted by a grand jury for attempted murder.

In a new interview with ABC News, he recalled feeling “trapped” and how “nothing felt real” having taken magic mushrooms several days prior to help cope with depression.

“I did something unfathomable, something I have to take responsibility for and that I regret,” Emerson told the outlet. "There was a feeling of being trapped, like, ‘Am I trapped in this airplane? This is not real. I need to wake up’.”

Emerson said had been struggling over the death of his best friend, Scott, a pilot who died while on a run six years earlier. Emerson had been away for the weekend with friends, celebrating and remembering Scott, during which time he took psychedelic mushrooms.

He said that after leaving the cockpit and being stopped from pulling another emergency lever by a flight attendant he had told the woman: “I don’t know what’s real, I need you to tough cuff me.”

Emerson is due to tell his story in a new documentary: The New York Times Presents: Lie To Fly. He hopes that his involvement will help raise awareness about the pressures of a pilot’s career and improve safety practices.

“Right now, if you raise your hand, not in every case, but there’s a perception out there that if you raise your hand and say something’s not right, there’s a very real possibility that you don’t fly again,” Emerson told ABC.

He also insists his relationship with his wife and children has improved. The couple have launched a new non-profit, Clear Skies Ahead. Their goal is to raise funds for and awareness of pilot mental health.

“I’m doing the best I can to work through that process right now and I’m better for it, which is kind of a weird thing to say but I really am better for all of this – it’s not the way I would have engineered it but I’m doing my best,” he said.

Emerson is not allowed to fly or leave the state, as the charges against him remain pending. However he says that given the chance, he would like to fly again.

“Of course I want to fly again. I’d be totally disingenuous if I said no,” he told ABC. “I don’t know in what capacity I’m going to fly again and I don’t know if that’s an opportunity that’s going to be afforded to me. It’s not up to me to engineer that.

“What is up to me is to do what’s in front of me, put myself in a position where that’s a possibility, that it can happen… But at the end of the day if I’m not meant to fly again, I’m not going to fly again.”