For 10 agonizing minutes, a commercial plane with 200 people on board glided through the skies of Spain with no one conscious at the controls. This event is real, and it happened on board a Lufthansa flight. It sounds like something out of the worst Hollywood script, and it has all the ingredients for a catastrophe: a sudden medical emergency, a safety protocol that backfired on the crew, and a very ill-timed trip to the bathroom.
This is the Frankfurt-Seville flight that took place on February 17, 2024. When the plane, an Airbus A321, was only half an hour away from its destination, the nightmare began to unfold.
A flight with no one at the controls
These types of incidents always begin as a normal workday. The two pilots in the cockpit were having a flight without any major problems. The captain, an experienced 43-year-old pilot, decided to take a routine break to use the restroom. The flight was in cruise mode and stable under autopilot control. The captain left the cockpit to go to the bathroom, leaving the 38-year-old co-pilot at the controls. This was a practice that was permitted by the airline’s operations manual at the time.
Eight minutes after the captain left, the problems began. The co-pilot, who had been alert and attentive moments before, suffered a sudden and severe seizure. It was caused by a neurological disorder that doctors had never detected. He lost consciousness so quickly that the co-pilot did not have time to alert the captain or the crew.
The panic sets in
There were 205 people on board the plane: 199 passengers and six crew members, who were left without any conscious human beings in the cockpit. We don’t want to imagine how panic spread when the captain went to return to the cockpit and couldn’t get in. The co-pilot did not respond to calls, and the reinforced cockpit door remained closed. Although American airlines always ensure that there are two people in the cockpit (even if it is just a flight attendant who does not know how to fly), this was a case that had never happened before in the European airline.
The captain entered the standard entry code, which unlocks the door if the pilot inside allows it. However, the co-pilot showed no signs of life. The captain tried five times without success, knowing that his co-worker must be on the other side to let him in.
To make matters worse, the co-pilot, who was unconscious, was involuntarily interacting with the controls (specifically, the right pedal). This accidental movement caused a slight 5° roll and a change in course. Thankfully, the automated flight system acted immediately to counteract the action.
Since there was nothing they could do, both the captain and the flight attendants remained outside, waiting for the co-pilot to regain consciousness. Fortunately, he regained enough lucidity to activate the latch and open the automatic door system. The captain found his colleague pale, sweaty, and moving erratically in the cockpit. It was a full-blown medical emergency.
He immediately requested assistance from the cabin crew and they found a doctor traveling on board. While they attended to their colleague, the captain managed to divert the flight to Madrid Barajas airport, where he made a smooth landing.
The real unsung hero of this story is the autopilot, as modern commercial aircraft always fly with this technology during the cruise phase. This system is much more complex than a car’s cruise control. The computer is capable of maintaining the route, altitude, and speed in a stable and precise manner. Although the co-pilot made erratic movements, the program managed to correct each of these movements. Thanks to this technological redundancy, the plane remained level at thousands of feet until the captain was able to regain access to the cockpit.