The former Alaska Airlines pilot who allegedly tried to crash a plane while on a magic mushroom trip in his spare time wants to fly again.
Joseph Emerson, 44, said the October incident, which initially led to him being charged with 83 counts of attempted murder and ended his flight career, was the biggest mistake of his life.
“Of course I want to fly again. It would be completely disingenuous if I said no,” the former Alaska Airlines pilot said in an interview with ABC News published Friday.
“I don’t know in what capacity I’ll fly again, and I don’t know if that opportunity will be presented to me. It’s not up to me to arrange that. What’s up to me is to do what’s in front of me, to put myself in a position where that’s a possibility that it can happen.”
In the interview with his wife Sarah, Emerson relived the horrific moment when, at an altitude of 30,000 feet, as a substitute passenger on the cockpit’s folding seat, he spontaneously pulled down two red levers that could have shut down both engines.
The long-time pilot had previously stated that his collapse was part of a days-long nervous breakdown and spiral of paranoia triggered by a magic mushroom trip he took with friends.
The group had reunited for a weekend trip to Washington state to remember the life of their late friend, whose death in 2018 plunged Emerson into deep grief – which was further exacerbated by the drug investigation.
Although the effects of the mushrooms lasted only a few hours, Emerson was still stunned days later and believed he could break out of his dreamlike trance by crashing the plane to San Francisco.
“It was a feeling of being trapped, like, ‘Am I trapped on this plane and can I never get home now?'” Emerson told ABC News.
Feeling helpless, Emerson relied on his knowledge of the aircraft to bring him back down to earth – literally.
“There were two red levers in front of my face,” Emerson recalled. “And I thought I was going to wake up and this was my way of escaping this unreal reality. So I reached up, grabbed them and pulled the levers.”
“I just thought, ‘This is going to wake me up,'” Emerson said. “I know what those levers do in a real airplane, and I need to wake up. You know, that’s 30 seconds of my life that I’d like to change, but I can’t.”
The pilot then tried to shut down the engines. Fortunately, the crew was able to prevent this and get him out of the cockpit.
But his erratic behavior didn’t end there – Emerson drank directly from a coffee pot and then tried to open the cabin door so he could jump out.
He was stopped again, but this time he asked a flight attendant to handcuff him until the plane made an emergency landing in Portland.
Emerson was arrested and charged with 83 counts of attempted murder – one count for each person on board the plane.
The ex-pilot no longer faces attempted murder charges, but more than 80 state and federal charges remain against him, including 83 counts of reckless endangerment, after prosecutors reduced the charges in December.
He could go on trial in the fall, but it’s still possible prosecutors will offer him a deal.
Emerson’s prison doctor concluded that he suffered from a condition called Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder (HPPD), which can cause someone who uses psychedelic mushrooms for the first time to experience persistent visual hallucinations or perceptual disturbances for several days, ABC reported.
“Ultimately, I take responsibility for the decisions I made. They are my decisions,” Emerson told ABC News.
“I hope that through the trials, not just the 30 seconds of the event, but my entire experience will be taken into account when society judges me for what happened. And I will accept the guilt that society places on me.”
