Shock over off-duty Bay Area pilot accused of trying to shut off plane’s engines in flight

There was nothing about Alaska Airlines pilot Joseph David Emerson that suggested a simmering cauldron of rage or despair that might drive a seemingly successful and happy Pleasant Hill family man to allegedly jeopardize dozens of innocent lives on a full flight Sunday from Seattle to San Francisco.

But authorities said that’s exactly what happened.

Emerson, 44, was being held Monday on 83 counts each of attempted murder and reckless endangerment and one count of endangering an aircraft, according to the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office in Oregon, where the plane landed safely after Emerson was removed from the cockpit.

Emerson, who is scheduled to be arraigned Tuesday, was off-duty on Sunday and riding in an extra “jump seat” in the cockpit of Horizon Air flight 2059, an Embraer 175 that left Everett, Washington, at 5:23 p.m. headed for San Francisco. According to Alaska Airlines, which owns Horizon Air, Emerson “unsuccessfully attempted to disrupt the operation of the engines,” the pilot and copilot “quickly responded, engine power was not lost and the crew secured the aircraft without incident.” The aircraft was diverted to the Portland airport.

Monday, no one answered and the shades were drawn at Emerson’s tidy gray home with white trim, whimsically decorated for Halloween with tombstones, ghosts, skeletons, giant spiders and a “Beware” sign. But stunned neighbors said they saw nothing amiss in him.

“No sign he was off. Nothing,” said neighbor Karen Yee.

The scary in-air situation renews questions about airline cockpit security and flight crew screenings raised by past tragedies, from the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist hijackings to incidents of mentally anguished pilots seizing control of aircraft and crashing them. Experts said this latest incident is expected to raise scrutiny over an off-duty pilot travel privilege American pilots covet and fought for.

Yee said that she and Emerson have been neighbors for years and that she lived next door to the pilot, his wife and two elementary school-aged children. She said her grandkids play with Emerson’s kids.

“We are devastated at the news,” Yee said. “He’s everything you would want to have in a good neighbor. We see him over the fence and on walks. Great guy. Great family. We really send our love and support to them.”

In an exchange recorded by LiveATC.net, one of the pilots calmly told air traffic controllers that “we’ve got the guy that tried to shut the engines down out of the cockpit.”

“He doesn’t sound like he’s causing any issue in the back right now, and I think he’s subdued,” the pilot continued. “Other than that, we want law enforcement as soon as we get on the ground and parked.”

The FAA, in an alert to airlines, said the jump-seat passenger had tried to disable the engines by deploying the engine fire-suppression system.

Ross “Rusty” Aimer, a retired United Airlines pilot and president of Aero Consulting Experts, said that “it would have been disastrous had he managed to do what he intended to do.”

Shutting both engines off at once at least would have given the pilots a chance to maintain control of the aircraft while attempting to restart them, Aimer said. If they were at normal cruising altitude, they would have been able to glide the aircraft with no power for about 20 minutes and about 100 miles to a safe landing spot. If just one engine was suddenly shut off, however, the aircraft would have lurched to one side from the thrust imbalance, and the pilots would have struggled to regain control, he said.

Aimer said it would be hard to imagine an innocent explanation for Emerson’s alleged behavior.

“Any pilot knows what those handles are for, even if they don’t fly that particular airplane,” Aimer said. “You know what those are for, and you don’t touch them, you don’t get anywhere close.”

The incident rattled Bay Area travelers who were on board. Jessica Verrilli, of San Francisco, flying with her toddler and infant children, said in a social media post on X that a flight attendant appeared “visibly worried” as she announced that “we need to emergency land.”

“The plane is ok, but we’re having an issue,” Verrilli recalled the flight attendant saying. After they landed, she recalled hearing crew explain that there was a “disturbance in the cockpit” and a “mental breakdown” and that police then escorted a handcuffed man off the plane who offered no resistance.

“I’m kind of just in shock,” Verrilli posted, thanking the airline crew for “an incredible job.”

Alaska Airlines’ statement didn’t identify Emerson but said “we are grateful for the professional handling of the situation by the Horizon flight crew and appreciate our guests’ calm and patience throughout this event.”

Alaska Airlines said the incident is being investigated by law enforcement authorities, including the FBI and the Port of Portland Police Department.

FAA records indicate that Emerson has a valid license to fly airline planes. The Multnomah County sheriff’s office, district attorney’s office and public defender’s office did not immediately respond to inquiries about whether Emerson had an attorney to comment on his behalf. Attempts by this newspaper to reach his family were unsuccessful.

Aimer said that U.S. pilots routinely fly as guests on planes they aren’t piloting to commute to and from work. An extra cockpit seat is available because the flights often are booked full with passengers.

“Most pilots don’t live where they work,” Aimer said. “That’s why this jump seat privilege is so important.”

Jump-seat travel for pilots only applies to U.S. pilots, and while it is a professional courtesy, the pilot ultimately has final say on whether to allow another pilot in the cockpit or on the plane, Aimer said. Off-duty pilots riding on the jump seat have their identification, license and medical records checked and are expected not to speak unless spoken to — the exception is if they have a safety concern at low altitude, he said.

“The jump seat belongs to the captain of any flight,” Aimer said, adding that he fears the privilege is in jeopardy now because while pilots are monitored for mental health, no screening is perfect. “This was a very valuable privilege to all airline pilots. It only takes one crazy person to destroy a good thing.”

There have been rare crashes believed to have been caused by crew members, including one in 2015 when the co-pilot of a Germanwings jet crashed in the French Alps. And Jeffrey Price, an aviation-security expert at Metropolitan University of Denver, recalled a 1994 incident in which a FedEx pilot facing possible termination tried to crash the plane but was subdued, subsequently convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

But Adam Silverthorne, president of the NRI Flying Club in Concord, where Emerson was a member and served as a flying instructor about five years ago, said Emerson was a “dot the i’s and cross the t’s sort of pilot” and “very safety-conscious,” hardly the profile of a troubled plane crasher.

“It’s the last person in the world you’d expect to be associated with some kind of arrest in aviation,” Silverthorne said. “It came as a shock. I’ve known him to be an upstanding citizen in every way.”

Bay Area News Group staff members Morgan Contreras, Veronica Martinez and the Associated Press, CNN and the New York Times contributed to this report.