A former Alaska Airlines pilot pleaded guilty in federal court on Friday for trying to shut down the engines of a passenger plane in midair from a cockpit jump seat, prompting an in-flight emergency.
Joseph Emerson, 46, reached plea agreements in both his federal and state cases in Oregon stemming from the October 2023 flight, his attorney told ABC News.
He pleaded guilty to interference with flight crew members and attendants in federal court in Portland, online court records show.
In a court filing on the guilty plea, Emerson said he had used psilocybin, which is found in mushrooms, two days before the flight “and I was still suffering from the aftereffects of this drug.”
“Although I was sitting in the jump seat and interacting with the flight crew, I believed I was either dreaming and felt an overwhelming need to wake up,” he said in the filing. “In an effort to wake up from my ‘dream’ I knowingly pulled the dual fire extinguisher handles for the aircraft engines while the aircraft was flying.”
“I knew that doing this would shut the engines off but at the time I felt that doing so would wake me up from my dream and I would be with my family,” he continued. “When I grabbed the handles, I intimidated the flight crew who had to grab my hands and wrists to pull them away from the handles and restow them so the engines would not shut down. Thanks to the efforts of the competent and well-trained flight crew, the engines did not shut down and they safely landed the aircraft.”
He is scheduled to be sentenced in the federal case on Nov. 17. He faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and a fine up to $250,000, according to the plea agreement.
Emerson also pleaded no contest to his state charges during a plea hearing Friday afternoon. After initially facing dozens of attempted murder charges, he was indicted by a Multnomah County grand jury on 83 misdemeanor counts of recklessly endangering another person and one count of endangering aircraft in the first degree, a felony.
The prosecutor, Deputy District Attorney Eric Pickard, noted during the hearing that an off-duty pilot in the cockpit jump seat has to be able and willing to pilot in the event of an emergency, but that Emerson “was not well and he boarded that flight anyway and tried to pull on those levers.”
Judge Cheryl Albrecht made a finding of guilty on all counts and sentenced him based on the terms of the plea agreement. He was sentenced to 50 days in jail, which has already been satisfied by time served following his arrest, and five years probation. He was also ordered to pay over $60,000 in restitution, largely to Alaska Airlines, and perform over 600 hours of community service.
“It does appear that you have worked assiduously to bring light to the difficulties that pilots face by having to always be that person, that person that can never be fallible,” Albrecht said.
Emerson addressed the court ahead of the sentencing, saying, “I regret the harm that I caused to every single person on board that airplane — crew members and guests.”
“I regret the harm I caused to my profession,” he continued, adding that he was grateful to the pilots and crew members on the flight “because they saved my life” and that he was able to seek help for alcohol abuse.
“Today, I get to be the dad I was incapable of when I had to use alcohol to deal with life as life is,” he said.
Two passengers who were on the flight with Emerson told the court ahead of the sentencing they now feel anxiety while flying. One, in virtual remarks, asked that the judge send a strong message so that something like this doesn’t happen again while calling the plea agreement “insufficient.” The other, in a statement read by the prosecutor, said she did not wish to see any further jail time for Emerson and wanted him to use his community service to visit schools to “speak on the dangers and risks associated with the use of psychedelics.”
Emerson said he would gladly speak to as many schools as he can, as well as to “pilots who suffer in silence.”
“I will speak to people who think, as I did on October the 20th, that I had everything under control, but I was incapable of grasping that I needed help,” he said. “I’m glad I have had the help today as a result of my actions.”
Following the hearing, Pickard told reporters that with the sentence, “we aim to hold him accountable for his choices, his conduct and his betrayal to his duty as a pilot.”
Emerson previously admitted to taking psychedelic mushrooms two days before boarding a Horizon Air flight from Everett, Washington, to San Francisco, as an off-duty crew member on Oct. 22, 2023. He previously told ABC News that during the flight, he pulled two large red levers that could have shut down both engines while having difficulties discerning reality.
One of the pilots grabbed Emerson’s wrist and they “physically struggled” for a short period, the federal plea agreement stated. The red engine shut-off handles were not pulled down all the way, and the engines were not turned off, according the plea agreement.
Emerson told one of the pilots, “I am not okay,” the plea agreement stated. He was arrested after the flight diverted to Portland, telling police that mentally he was “in crisis” and had not slept for approximately 48 hours “and had the feeling that everything wasn’t real,” the plea agreement stated.
Emerson has called the incident the worst 30 seconds of his life.
“At the end of the day, I accept responsibility for the choices that I made. They’re my choices,” Emerson told ABC News in an August 2024 interview. “What I hope through the judicial processes is that the entirety of not just 30 seconds of the event, but the entirety of my experience is accounted for as society judges me on what happened. And I will accept what the debt that society says I owe.
Emerson was in Washington with a group celebrating the life of his best friend, Scott, a pilot who died while on a run several years earlier. The group took psychedelic mushrooms — a drug that can make you hallucinate and typically has effects that last a few hours. Emerson said that for him, the physical side effects lasted days, and that while on the flight back home he felt like he was trapped and increasingly felt like nothing was real.
“There are two red handles in front of my face,” Emerson recalled. “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.”
His jail physician would later tell him that he suffered from a condition called hallucinogen persisting perception disorder, which can cause someone who uses psychedelic mushrooms for the first time to suffer from persistent visual hallucinations or perception issues for several days afterward.
In the wake of his arrest, Emerson and his wife started a nonprofit, Clear Skies Ahead, to raise funds for and awareness of pilot mental health.
