http://staugustine.com/stories/01250..._4358533.shtml
"When pilot dies, panic quickly follows "
St. Augustine photographer Tom Addison didn't worry when flight attendants on Continental Flight 1838 asked if there were any doctors on board.
The frequent traveler had heard such requests on previous flights. What came next, however, was a first.
A voice came over the loudspeaker and said, "Is anyone a pilot? We need someone with flying experience."
That's when panic set in for the 210 passengers aboard the Boeing 757, which was en route from Houston to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, on Saturday. Some people gasped. Others laughed, saying the announcement must have been a joke. A few passengers stood up, demanding to know what was happening.
"Nobody really knew what was going on - until the cockpit door opened," Addison recalled, back from Mexico at Addison-Fitzgerald Studios on Wednesday.
The passengers fell silent as two men, who work in the medical field, dragged the plane's unconscious pilot from the cockpit into the aisle. They began administering CPR as flight attendants ran back and forth to the rear of the plane, bringing life support equipment to the men administering CPR.
"It was something right out of the Twilight Zone," Addison said, admitting he, like the rest of the passengers, was beginning to panic.
One passenger asked what was on everyone's mind: "Can one pilot land a plane this big?"
The passenger next to Addison, an Albuquerque, NM, man who owns a plane, stood up and offered to help the co-pilot make an emergency landing.
Addison said flight attendants managed to stay calm and keep the passengers in their seats as the plane changed course.
As the plane diverted toward McAllen, a small city near the southern tip of Texas, efforts to revive the pilot continued to fail. The middle-aged man, whose name has not been released, had greeted the passengers as they boarded the plane just over an hour earlier.
About 30 minutes later, the plane made an emergency landing on the McAllen-Miller International Airport's short runway.
It came to what Addison calls a "hard stop." Then emergency crews boarded the plane and took the pilot away in an ambulance. Minutes before the landing, however, Addison said the pilot "flat lined." He never regained consciousness and was pronounced dead soon after he was taken away.
A McAllen medical examiner has not released the pilot's official cause of death, but Addison said the plane's passengers were told it was a heart attack.
Before they got off the plane, the passengers applauded the pilots for the safe landing and clapped for the people who administered CPR.
Continental employees served them food and drinks over the next few hours as they awaited a new flight crew to take them the rest of the way to Puerto Vallarta.
Addison was headed to the Mexican city to conduct a photo shoot for Ujena swimwear.
The shoot went well, and the trip back to St. Augustine was "strictly normal," the photographer said.
The experience won't discourage him from continuing to fly.
"Flying really is safe. The odds of that happening are one million to one," he said.
One passenger asked what was on everyone's mind: "Can one pilot land a plane this big?"
