A Turkish Airlines plane made an emergency landing in New York after the pilot suddenly fainted and died in the middle of the flight.
Flight TK204 departed from Seattle shortly after 7pm on Tuesday for Istanbul but made an unexpected landing at John F Kennedy International Airport at 5.57am on Wednesday, according to FlightAware.
A pilot ‘collapsed during the flight,’ Turkish Airlines spokesman Yahya Üstün wrote on X (formerly Twitter).
‘After an unsuccessful attempt to give first aid, the flight crew of another pilot and a co-pilot decided to make an emergency landing, but he died before landing.’
The Airbus A350 was roughly eight hours into the journey and passing over Baffin Island in northern Canada when it turned around for New York.
Turkish Airlines identified the pilot as İlçehin Pehlivan, 59, who was with the company since 2007.
Pehlivan had regular medical checkups, with the last one in March, and did not have any health issues detected, according to the airline.
‘As the Turkish Airlines family, we wish God’s mercy upon our captain and patience to his grieving family, all his colleagues and loved ones,’ Üstün said.
The Federal Aviation Administration told The New York Times that ‘one of the pilots suffered a medical emergency’.
It is not the only recent incident of a pilot dying or having a medical emergency while in the captain’s seat of a plane.
In June 2022, a Piper airplane pilot reportedly thought his co-pilot was playing a joke and napping in the cockpit. But his instructor had actually suffered acute cardiac failure and died shortly after the aircraft departed from Blackpool Airport in Lancashire. His colleague did not realize he was dead until he landed the plane and was taxiing to the runway.
And in July of this year, an easyJet co-pilot fainted on a flight from London to Lisbon with 193 passengers aboard. The plane landed without issues and the pilot was rushed to Santa Maria Hospital in Lisbon.
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