'I have no idea how to fly': How air traffic controllers helped a passenger land a plane
JUPITER, Fla. – "I just pulled off the impossible."
That was all Robert Morgan, 47, could manage to write in a text to his wife, Michelle, once he and other South Florida air traffic controllers helped guide a plane to a safe landing this month after its pilot became incapacitated, leaving two men with no flight experience to figure out what to do next.
The nine-seater was heading for the Treasure Coast International Airport in Fort Pierce, Florida, from the Bahamas when the pilot complained of a headache before losing consciousness. He slumped forward and sent the plane into a nosedive before air traffic controllers located the plane and guided the passengers safely to Palm Beach International Airport (PBIA) on May 10.
Morgan didn't know what to say to his wife, because he could hardly believe what had happened. In 20 years of manning the air traffic control tower, he had never worked with a pilot in the air who wasn't actually trained as a pilot.
"I helped save someone's life," he texted Michelle.
"Call me," she responded.
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Previously from the Palm Beach Post: Air traffic controller helps passenger land plane
Miracle landing at Florida airport
Morgan and Chip Flores, a 38-year-old air traffic controller in Fort Pierce who answered the passenger's initial call, want the world to know the surprise landing was a team effort.
More than a dozen air traffic controllers in Fort Pierce and Palm Beach County were assisted by the national command center in Washington, D.C., in locating and communicating with the Cessna 208 Grand Caravan, which was about 30 miles offshore when the passenger radioed into Flores.
Flores' voice on an audio recording has now been heard around the world as the passenger, now identified as Darren Harrison, tells him at 11:21 a.m., "I've got a serious situation here. My pilot has gone incoherent. I have no idea how to fly the airplane."
Flores responded with instructions to keep the wings level while operational supervisor Justin Boyle and PBIA operations supervisor Joshua Somers rushed to track the plane.
Meanwhile, Morgan was on his 30-minute break. The urgent page that brought him back to air traffic control alerted him that something was immediately wrong.
Air traffic controller recounts emergency landing: 'I dropped everything'
"I just dropped everything, I was reading a book, and I just rushed over," he remembered. "Usually that's a really bad sign, you know, somebody could be crashing or something really bad is going on."
After being briefed, Morgan sat down in the radar room at the base of the air control tower, expecting to talk to the passenger on the headset. But his supervisor Mark Siviglia pointed to the emergency radio – the passenger Morgan needed to help couldn't get on the right frequency.
That's why there's no recording of what happened next.
Morgan got in touch with Harrison when the plane was around Delray Beach. Instead of directing him to the Boca Raton Airport, Morgan decided to bring the plane to PBIA where there'd be a longer runway and better radio connection.
"As much as I (didn't) want to bring him farther from an airport in an emergency-type situation, I needed to bring him to the bigger airport," he said.
In order to give Harrison enough time to slowly bring the plane down, Morgan directed him to pass PBIA and loop back to land. That was the only moment where he doubted himself.
"I just wanted to try to... keep talking to him, to try to make it as if 'someone's here for me,' type of situation," Morgan said. "Being in aviation, you hear about a lot of accidents and you hear a lot of tapes and kind of what led up to them. ... Usually they're like 'hey, can you just keep talking to me, help me through this?'"
Soon enough, the plane was descending at a speed of 110 mph, which is about normal for aircraft when they land.
Morgan and the crowd of controllers around him lost contact with Harrison at 300 feet off the ground because the radar couldn't pick up an aircraft that was so close.
They waited.
A few moments later, Harrison came back on the radio to tell the room that was holding its collective breath that he'd landed safely on runway 10L (said out loud as one-zero-left) at 12:37 p.m.
"Then he said, 'OK, I'm on the ground now, what do you want me to do? How do you stop this thing?'" Morgan remembered. "He said 'do you want me to taxi it off the runway?' and I said 'Don't worry about that sir, just don't worry about it.'"
The Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office and Palm Beach County Fire Rescue were on scene to take the pilot to the hospital. The FAA announced Thursday that the pilot was stable and remained hospitalized.
"This was an 'all hands on deck' situation and every hand stepped up," Flores said.
Air traffic controller went flying when he got home
When he left PBIA after the "miracle" landing, Morgan went straight to another airport to fly with a friend and shake off the stress.
On Friday, he returned to work for his usual air traffic control shift from 1:30 p.m. until 11 p.m.
It was his first day back in the chair doing his job, but things were different. They probably always will be.
Morgan's phone has been ringing ever since the May 10 landing as his loved ones find out about what happened, followed swiftly by the rest of the world.
Wednesday was his youngest daughter Chloe's birthday, but he spent the day talking to reporters and the FAA. The family was able to get away for cake and presents in the evening.
While Robert Morgan hopes to pass on his passion for flying to his kids, he doesn't want to force any of them to take up his career.
But he trusts that if they ever found themselves as unlucky as Harrison, that they'd be able to get themselves to the ground safely.
In fact, he thinks most people would be able.
"A lot of people can do more than they think," he said. "You just have to stay as calm as you can."
Reach reporter Katherine Kokal at kkokal@pbpost.com.