The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating a tense moment in the sky after a Delta pilot suffered a medical emergency shortly after takeoff. According to the report, the flight had 185 people on board and had left Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport bound for Orlando when the other pilot began urgently reporting that one of the pilots could be incapacitated.
The pilot who was still able to fly relayed the nature of the emergency to controllers on the ground. According to the account of the flight, the symptoms being described included numbness in the arms and legs as well as a racing heart rate, a combination that prompted an immediate response from air traffic control as the plane climbed away from the airport.
Controllers moved quickly to bring the aircraft back down. They told the crew that they were clear to safely turn back and land, with one instruction relayed to the flight being to plan on getting the affected pilot on the ground as soon as possible. The flight was then able to return and land without further incident.
Once on the ground, the pilot who had fallen ill was taken to the hospital. According to the report, the aircraft and everyone else on board came through the emergency safely, with the situation handled during the critical minutes just after the plane had taken off and was still climbing to its cruising altitude.
The episode was not the only one of its kind in recent days. According to the report, a similar incident happened just days earlier, when another Delta pilot on a flight out of Los Angeles declared an emergency and diverted to Detroit. In that case, the captain radioed that he would taxi the jet to the gate himself and then needed to go to the hospital.
In both of those cases, the flights landed safely and both of the Delta pilots involved were taken to the hospital afterward. The two incidents, coming so close together, drew renewed attention to how such medical emergencies are managed inside the cockpit while an aircraft is already in the air and carrying passengers.
The situations also underlined why commercial flights are required to have two pilots on board, so that one can continue to fly and land the aircraft if the other becomes unable to carry on. For its part, Delta said that the crew quickly got to work and followed all of the required procedures during the emergency.