The wife of a pilot who suffered a medical emergency took over flying and managed to safely land the plane in California, authorities said. The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports that real estate broker Eliot Alper was flying a twin-engine Beechcraft King Air 90 with his wife, Yvonne Kinane-Wells, from Henderson, Nevada, on their way to Monterey, California, on October 4 when he was incapacitated because of a medical emergency.
Kinane-Wells took control and landed the plane with help from air traffic controllers at Meadows Field Airport in Bakersfield, California, the newspaper reported.
The newspaper reported that Alper later died. A person who answered the phone at Spacefinders and Ramrod Realty in Henderson confirmed the report but refused to provide their name.
A Federal Aviation Administration report states that a member of the flight crew died during the incident and there was only one other person, a passenger, on board.
Kern County Fire authorities were called to assist during the emergency landing.
Agency spokesperson Jon Drucker said dispatchers received a call that the co-pilot was going to take over landing the plane, and fire authorities followed the aircraft down the runway and chased it as it came to a stop.
Turkish Airlines pilot dies while flying plane from Seattle | What happened next?
Earlier on Wednesday, a Turkish Airlines jetliner headed from Seattle to Istanbul made an emergency landing in New York after the captain died on board, an airline official said.
Pilot Ilcehin Pehlivan, 59, lost consciousness at some point after flight 204 took off from Seattle on Tuesday night, Turkish Airlines spokesperson Yahya Ustun said in a statement.
The medical intervention failed to revive the captain, and the co-pilot decided to make an emergency landing, but the captain died before the plane landed, Ustun said. Data from the tracking site FlightAware shows that the Airbus A350 landed at John F. Kennedy International Airport just before 6 am.
Arrangements were being made for passengers to reach their destination from New York, the airline spokesperson said. Pehlivan had worked at Turkish Airlines since 2007, Ustun said. A routine health check in March showed no health problems that would have prevented him from working, he said. “As Turkish
Airlines, we deeply feel the loss of our captain and extend our sincerest condolences to his bereaved family, colleagues, and all his loved ones,” Ustun said.
(With inputs from agency)
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