A passenger with no flying experience safely landed a private plane in a Florida airport Tuesday afternoon, May 10, when the pilot became incapacitated. LANNIS WATERS/THE PALM BEACH POST/USA TODAY NETWORK/Reuters
Who: Passenger – Darren Harrison
When: May 10, 2022
Where: Airplane returning from the Bahamas
What: Landing the airplane having never flown an airplane before
- A single-engine Cessna 208
- The pilot had gone incoherent
- Passenger: Darren Harrison
- Air Traffic Controller, Robert Morgan
- Robert Morgan was also a flight instructor.
- “I rush over there and I walk in and the room is really busy … and they’re like, ‘Hey, this pilot’s incapacitated. The passengers are flying the plane. They have no flying experience'” [1]
- “He was really calm . . . He [the passenger] said, ‘I don’t know how to fly. I don’t know how to stop this thing if I do get on the runway.'” [1]
- “Morgan had never flown this model Cessna. He pulled up a picture of the instrument panel’s layout and started guiding his new student step-by-step.” [1]
- “”I felt like I was going to cry then, because I had so much adrenaline built up,” Morgan said. “I was really happy that it worked out and that nobody got hurt.” [1]
- The Cessna landed at Palm Beach International airport.
“I’ve got a serious situation here,” the man told the controller on Tuesday, according to audio from LiveATC.net. “My pilot has gone incoherent, and I have no idea how to fly the airplane.”
Controllers focused on keeping the man calm, asking if he knew the position of the single-engine Cessna 280 and what the specific situation was with the pilot.
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- “I’ve got a serious situation here . . . .
- “My pilot has gone incoherent, and I have no idea how to fly the airplane.”
- “He is incoherent; he is out.”
- “I can see the coast of Florida in front of me.”
- “I don’t know how to fly. I don’t know how to stop this thing if I do get on the runway.” [2]
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Key Biblical Thoughts:
- discipleship
- Bible teaching
- raising children
- advice
- instruction
- evangelism
- missions
- pastoring
- clay vessels
- listening
- life / death
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Sermonic Example: There are several distinct ways to use illustrative material. This sermonic example fits the second method.
(use whatever you find useful in the above details)
. . . . Morgan told Darren Harrison, “We are trying to locate you.”
Now here is what Robert Morgan said when he was interviewed after the successful landing of that Cessna airplane on the runway in Florida . . . . “I was just doing my job.”
That is what we are called to do when it comes to speaking the Gospel. “We are trying to locate” those individuals who the Lord has for us to talk to. When we share the Gospel with them, we are just doing our job, and the Lord’s parable makes that point in Luke 17. Of course, we share the Gospel! . . . .
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Other Information & Links:
1. — https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/florida-passenger-lands-plane/index.html
A passenger with no flying experience landed a plane at a Florida airport after the pilot became incapacitated
“Try to hold the wings level and see if you can start descending for me. Push forward on the controls and descend at a very slow rate,” the air traffic controller can be heard telling the fledgling pilot in LiveATC audio.
The passenger did not know where the airplane was headed and could only relay the altitude to Morgan, the traffic controller.
“I have the coast in front of me,” the passenger said.
With a calm voice, the air traffic controller at Treasure Coast International Airport in Florida instructed the passenger how to use his transponder so the aircraft could be located via radar. He told the passenger to descend to 5,000 feet, according to the audio transmission.
“Maintain wings level and just try to follow the coast, either north or southbound,” Morgan said. “We’re trying to locate you.”
“Just continue northbound over the beach and we’ll try to get you some further instructions,” Morgan said.
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RhetoricAndHomiletics.Org 