Passengers had to restrain pilot, leading to emergency landing

The moment that plane swerved, a Bible verse came to my mind.You know, you're trying not to be fearful in those moments, but it's very hard to fend off fear when all of a sudden that airplane felt like a paper plane.So my wife and I and our two boys were flying from Florida, where we live, up to Nova Scotia, where I'm from, into the flight about a half an hour when suddenly the plane veered to the left, and then after a few seconds veered to the right.And I've spent my whole career flying with Air Canada, so I know turbulence when I feel it.And this was clearly cockpit, like someone hit the controls out of control.And it felt like if you were in a car and someone suddenly turned the wheel, like, just like that, because those planes are so small.

And then that ding noise where the captain can summon the flight attendant to the cockpit went off a few times, like, kind of urgently.And the flight attendant went up, went in, closed the door.A few minutes went by.The plane was kind of moving erratically here and there, but not too violently.everyone was kind of looking at each other with a lot of nervousness and then the cockpit door flew open and the flight attendant was dragging the captain out by his armpits and he fell down on the floor in front of me and at that time he didn't look like he was breathing and they were screaming he's not breathing and his face was like gray green and I just was like I gotta get out of the way so I I dashed to the back of the plane where my wife and two boys were.For some reason, I was sitting in the front.

And then I was just stricken.I looked at my wife and I could barely talk.And I was like, the captain?dead.But then within a couple seconds, he was violently reacting.And I want to stress violently as in physically violently, but he was not angry or coherent.

Like it was not a clear, clearly not an intentional kind of reaction.He was kicking and flailing and hollering.So me and a couple other men sort of flung up there and were trying to restrain him.He was kicking at the windows.He was clenching.He was resisting us like very strenuously, like as if someone had an adrenaline response.

What's going through your head as that was happening?

Well, the moment that pain swerved, a Bible verse came to my mind.which is pretty apocalyptic.I was thinking, it is appointed unto men a day to die, and you're trying not to be fearful in those moments, but it's very hard to fend off fear when all of a sudden that airplane felt like a paper plane, when it was out of control, and all of a sudden the pilot's on the floor.It took me a few minutes to kind of realize, wait, one pilot is on the floor, there is another pilot flying the plane, and this guy's out of the cockpit.We're fine.At some point, there was an announcement that we'd be making an emergency landing at Logan in about 10 minutes, which turned out to be about 30.

And the duration of that 30 minutes, we had to physically restrain him.Whatever he was going through did not end until pretty much the plane landed.And then,kind of realized something really bad had happened, but he wasn't really all there.And all of a sudden he started saying sorry.

So you guys made an emergency landing, and then presumably he was taken off the plane.

So four or five Boston City firefighters came on the plane.We were sure happy to see them.they escorted him off.At that point, they were able to help him up and walk him off the plane.I was just very grateful.It could have ended really badly.

And really, we saw a lot of great character from everyone that was there, the staff, the other passengers.People were really concerned for the captain's well -being.People stayed calm.We just were like, we are not a people of fear.We need to be brave.The world is chaotic no matter where you go at any time.