Airlines pilot dies mid-flight, co-pilot flies plane to safety

A Turkish Airlines flight made an emergency landing in New York early Wednesday after the captain lost consciousness mid-flight and died, an airline spokesman said in a statement.

Yahya Ustun, senior vice president for media relations, said on X that Ilcehin Pehlivan, 59, did not respond to medical intervention onboard the Airbus 350 scheduled to fly from Seattle to Istanbul. There was a co-pilot in the cockpit.

The flight was over northern Canada before it turned to the south, making a four-hour flight to New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, according to data from tracking site Flightradar24.

Flight TK204 landed at JFK just before 6 a.m. Wednesday. The Federal Aviation Administration said the flight landed safely.

Pehlivan died before the plane landed, Ustun said. The pilot had worked for the airline since 2007 and passed a health exam Aug. 3.

“As the Turkish Airlines family, we wish God’s mercy upon our captain and patience to his grieving family, all his colleagues and loved ones,” Ustun said, according to an X translation from Turkish.

Airliners are required to operate with two pilots on board. Normally a captain and a first officer split the work of flying the plane, sharing responsibility for working the controls and communicating with air traffic controllers.

But having two pilots also provides a backstop when one of them is incapacitated, and pilots’ unions have been campaigning in recent years to block discussion of weakening the current requirements

“Once again, life will remind us that having just one pilot in the cockpit is inviting a deep risk to every passenger on the airplane,” said Dennis Tajer, a spokesman for the Allied Pilots Association, which represents pilots at American Airlines.

“You don’t have to be a pilot to understand how important is to have a human backup.”

Serious in-flight emergencies on airliners are rare. But in the past decade, several pilots have either been incapacitated or died while they were at the controls.

Last year, a pilot for Chilean carrier, LATAM Airlines, suffered a medical emergency after departing Miami and later died.

In 2022 a similar incident occurred shortly after an Envoy Air flight left Chicago. In both cases the remaining crew were able to land the plane safely.

In January, both pilots aboard a flight in Indonesia fell asleep, according to investigators. The plane veered off path, but one of the pilots woke up, and the flight continued on.

Tajer said pilots don’t typically train to fly their aircraft single-handed. It’s hard to do, and he said pilots might call a flight attendant to help work controls that are hard to reach.

“It’s difficult to do on a clear sunny day. Throw in any other weather challenges or equipment malfunctions, and you’ve really got a big problem,” Tajer said.

While some in the airline industry have explored the idea of using a single pilot, regulators around the world have been skeptical.

Michael Whitaker, the head of the FAA, said at an event in September hosted by a pilots union that he was committed to keeping the current rules in place.

“Two well-trained, well-rested pilots in the flight deck is a key pillar of safety,” Whitaker said, according to the union.