Darren Harrison, right, with Robert Morgan, an air traffic controller who helped guide him during the flight
(Picture: Handout)A passenger who took the controls of an aircraft and landed it in Florida after the pilot fell unconscious has spoken about the harrowing “life or death situation” for the first time.
The drama unfolded last Tuesday as the pilot flew passenger Darren Harrison west across the Atlantic towards the US coast from Marsh Harbour in the Bahamas.
Harrison, 39, a complete novice, was talked through his approach, descent and landing by an air traffic controller after putting in a distress call to say: "I have no idea how to fly the airplane."
Harrison, who was one of two passengers on the single-engine Cessna plane, admitted his heart rate was “probably 160” as he landed.
He told NBC News: “"Somebody asked me the other day what my heart rate was or what I thought my heart rate was when all of that was going on, and I said probably in the 90s.
“And they said, what about when it was all over. And I said it was probably 160.”
"By the time I stopped the plane, that’s when it hit me," he added.
"I was pretty calm and collected the whole time, because I knew it was a life-or-death situation.
"Either you do what you have to do to control the situation or you’re gonna die. And that’s what I did."
He also described reaching over the incapacitated pilot to grab the controls of the airplane.
"Just common sense, I guess, being on airplanes, because I knew if I went up and yanked that the airplane would stall," he told Savannah Guthrie. "And I also knew at the rate we were going, we were probably going way too fast and it would rip the wings off the airplane.
"That’s the scariest part of the whole story."
Harrison quickly understood how much danger he and his fellow passenger were in.
"By the time I had moved forward to the front of the airplane, I realized that we had now gone into a dive at a very fast rate," Harrison said.
"All I saw, when I came up the front, was water out the right window, and I knew it was coming quick. Very, very quickly."
During his descent Harrison was helped by controller Robert Morgan, who printed out a picture of the cockpit controls to guide him through the steps of flying and landing the plane.
Robert, also a flight instructor, revealed he was on his break reading a book outside when the emergency call came in.
He said: "I just had to keep him calm, point him to the runway and tell him how to reduce the power so he could descend to land.
"Before I knew it, he was like, ‘I’m on the ground. How do I turn this thing off?’’
