A federal judge on Monday ruled there would be no prison time for a former Alaska Airlines pilot who had taken psychedelic mushrooms days before he tried to cut the engines of a passenger flight in 2023 while riding off-duty in the cockpit.
A federal judge on Monday ruled there would be no prison time for a former Alaska Airlines pilot who had taken psychedelic mushrooms days before he tried to cut the engines of a passenger flight in 2023 while riding off-duty in the cockpit.
Sorry. Fucker may have killed everyone on board if he pulled the lever.
Don’t care if he had a hallucination or whatever from psychedelics (and I doubt that’s what happened, 40 hours after the fact.)
Doubt the sentencing would be the same if he were black.
Trust me, this guy’s life is over. He will probably never fly again, or be hired to do anything else as a convicted felon except scrub toilets or sell timeshares. He owes $60,000 in restitution just to the airline, not counting the cost of lawyers. He was technically sentenced to 50 days, which has been served during the court process. The federal prosecutor being as strict as they come, only wanted a year in prison.
He’ll live as a recovering alcoholic who will forever carry the shame and weight of this mistake for the rest of his life, fully known to his friends, family, his entire former workplace, and most of the general public. And his best friend is dead.
Rest assured, I think he’s been punished quite severely.
Not that I disagree with what you wrote, but tell this to those people sitting in prison for a bag of weed or other bullshit charges.
Other people are unjustly over incarcerated isn’t a reason to over incarcerate more people
The fact that they were unjustly imprisoned isn’t a good reason to waste taxpayer money throwing this guy in prison.
Why do you think another injustice is justified by the injustice they suffered?
You ARE saying it’s bad that there are non-violent drug offenders in prison, right?
I don’t think its an injustice for a guy who tried to kill a plane full of people to spend time in jail. The fact that he’s trying to pin the blame on mushrooms that he took days prior, and the fact that people buy that (further stigmatizing psilocybin in the eyes of the public), makes me feel that he deserves more than a slap on the wrist. Would you feel any different toward a drunk driver who nearly plowed into a van full of people just because he’s sorry and a white professional with a family?
No he hasn’t. He still lives free and can enjoy life, sunshine, and the great outdoors.
A trained pilot can’t find work flying in another country that may have far less worker scrutiny?
The countries that would overlook this are few and far between with other serious issues making it not worth trying.
I mean, he probably won’t fly commercial passenger flights anymore, but there’s a good chance he could still be a bush pilot in Alaska.
The FAA will never issue him even a private pilot certificate again in his entire life, let alone a commercial to be allowed to fly as a bush pilot.
He’ll get a nice pay rise working for the royal Saudi family
Saudi isn’t the type of country that would overlook this, especially with the taboo on drug use in the Middle East.
That’s fair. I saw it as an opportunity to jump in on the Saudis buying up every “troubled” thing they could.
That’s the thing, they aren’t buying up “troubled” things, they’re looking for high return investments to future proof them against the decline of oil or anything that buys them western influence or street cred. A disgraced, homicidal, drug using pilot isn’t any of those things.
He might be able to get away with a flying gig somewhere in the world but not in any first or second world and most third world countries. Saudi is way too on top of their shit to allow his dumb ass in a cockpit again; his only options are truly the bottom of the barrel worldwide.
Thank you.
Why would the Saudis care about him
Do you think it’s easy or convenient to uproot your life and move to the type of country that has lower standards? Cause it ain’t Canada, Europe or most of the rest of the world.
He probably could sell the rights to Hollywood to pay off all that debt. Fucked up. He probably needs mental help, not a felony.
Hmm, I was going to say there’s not enough to this incident to really flesh out a movie script, but they did it Sullenberger didn’t they? Don’t remember.
Many people have lost friends and loved ones.
That doesn’t justify trying to take down an aircraft. I don’t know why, and don’t really care. He recklessly endangered the lives of everyone on that flight.
If an otherwise normal-joe had done this, they’d be buried under the prison.
If this was genuinely a mental illness, he can spend some time at a psychiatric facility. But he should get more time than any number of stupid infractions.
Btw, cali law, you can get your records expunged after 2 years if completing sentencing. His life is far from “over”.
Not sure anyone is trying to justify that.
Prosecution was only asking for a year. Because this is different than an aggressive passenger storming the cockpit to grab the controls, which is impossible these days. This guy is being punished for making the stupid decision to get on a flight without sleeping for 40 hours. Hallucinations from sleep deprivation are real.
Absolutely
Shrooms are out of your system very quickly
This is bullshit, and I’d wager that his family have connections
I doubly agree with you about the skin colour thing
Shrooms might be out of your system, but there can definitely be after affects that come about hours after you think you’re “done” tripping. Anecdotally, it happened to me. Took some shrooms with friends one day, had a great time, came down without issue. Later that night (roughly 16-18 hours after the trip) I experienced something that broke my psyche for a while.
I won’t go into details, but I 100% believed I got sucked into a horrible alternate reality and was trapped. I wound up jumping out an open window on the second floor to “escape” and had a full on psychological breakdown. After several days of ego death, I decided it had to have been residual effects from the shrooms, because I just don’t think I can accept the alternative.
Granted, that is not a full 40 hours like this pilot. But before my experience I would have told you it’s not possible to have hallucinations from a psychedelic hours after the trip had ended. Psychedelic’s literally make new connections in your brain, it’s not like those all just disappear when it leaves your system.