Contrary to popular belief, this is a line in the sand for the aviation industry that has not been crossed until now, when it was forced to happen to save lives. Not many lives, but lives nonetheless.

On December 20, a Beechcraft Super King Air 200 flying over Colorado experienced a sudden loss of cabin pressure. Garmin’s Emergency Autoland system took over, flew the aircraft, talked to air traffic control, and landed safely at Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport near Denver.

Operated by charter company Buffalo River Aviation, the flight had no passengers on board, just two pilots who willingly relinquished control while still maintaining control of the situation.

When the cabin altitude exceeded safe levels, the pilots put on oxygen masks. At that point, Autoland automatically engaged, as designed. Rather than disengaging it, the pilots decided to just let it do its thing while keeping their hands close just in case something went wrong. A real “Jesus, take the wheel” kind of moment.

Autoland isn’t the same thing as the autoland systems airlines use in foggy conditions. This technology is built specifically for emergencies where pilots might be incapacitated or overwhelmed. Once it’s activated, either automatically or via a very literal, very conspicuous big red button, the system takes full control. It chooses an appropriate airport based on distance and runway length, communicates with air traffic control using an automated voice, avoids terrain, and lands the plane without human input.

In this case, the system announced to controllers that it had taken over due to “pilot incapacitation,” which, as you can imagine, sparked a little bit of concern at first. Buffalo River Aviation later clarified that this was just how the system reports emergencies, not a literal interpretation of the conditions in the cockpit. The first responder video shows both pilots exiting the craft unharmed after safely landing.

Garmin says Autoland is currently installed on around 1,700 aircraft, mostly smaller private and charter planes. This was the first real-world proof that a fully autonomous emergency landing system can work exactly as intended, under pressure, without a safety net.

The FAA is investigating, but the outcome is promising. The aviation industry might finally have a true failsafe plan that, one hopes, will not panic in an emergency when there are no other options.

The post Plane Lands Itself After In-Flight Emergency for the First Time appeared first on VICE.

Have you ever had that moment on a plane where you needed to use the bathroom real bad? As you stumble down the aisle desperately searching for relief, you finally reach a door – a sign of hope.

It’s happened to the best of us. But this woman on board a Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) flight explored an alternate ending when the bathroom door she thought she was entering turned out to be an emergency exit instead, Gulf News reports.

What would have been a minor bathroom emergency caused quite the stir. A PIA spokesperson relayed that flight “PK 702, from Manchester to Islamabad was delayed by seven hours. The departure was delayed on Friday night when a passenger erroneously opened the emergency exit causing the emergency chute to activate.”

This emergency evacuation chute made matters worse, as the scenario suddenly became very costly. Aviation industry experts said that it costs an airline $6,000 to $30,000 anytime an emergency chute is deployed.

A tweet by Omar Quraishi shows the flight with the released evacuation chute.

Luckily, the flight was still preparing for takeoff when the incident happened.

Almost 40 passengers that were sitting around the opened emergency door, and their luggage, had to be offloaded as per standard operating procedure. They were given transportation and hotel, and were later placed on alternative flights. The remaining passengers on board continued their journey seven hours later.

Well let’s take this as a lesson that no matter how desperate, if the door looks too complicated, it’s probably not the one we need.

Find Edoardo on Twitter and Instagram.

The post This Flight Passenger Opened The Emergency Exit Thinking It Was The Toilet appeared first on VICE.

According to the BBC, the pilots of a Jet Airways flight from Mumbai to Jaipur on Thursday somehow “forgot” to do just that before takeoff. Partway through the flight, as the plane climbed higher and the air got thinner, some of the plane’s 166 passengers suddenly started to feel sick. About a half-hour into the trip, at least 30 passengers reported feeling headaches and got nose bleeds, while others actually started bleeding from their ears.

Without any announcement from the flight crew, oxygen masks dropped from the ceiling, and passengers found themselves in a “panic situation,” scrambling to put them on without any instructions.

“Scores of passengers including me bleeding from nose,” Satish Nair wrote in a tweet about the flight. “No staff to help… no announcement on board to wear the oxygen mask. Passenger safety completely ignored.”

About 45 minutes into the flight, the plane made a U-turn and headed back to Mumbai for an emergency landing. After it touched down, the more than 30 passengers who reported feeling ill received first aid treatment, while at least five passengers were taken to the hospital. Thankfully, according to the Indian Express, they’ve all been released.

In a statement, Jet Airways apologized for the incident and said that, eventually, the plane touched down “normally” in Mumbai—though an emergency landing of a plane full of bloody passengers doesn’t exactly sound “normal.”

“All guests were deplaned safely and taken to the terminal. First aid was administered to few guests who complained of ear pain, bleeding nose, etc.,” the airline said. “Jet Airways regrets the inconvenience caused to its guests.”

According to the Hindustan Times, India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau is looking into what went wrong, and the country’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation is already working on a report about the incident. Meanwhile, the crew on Thursday’s flight has been suspended, which seems fair, given that all this mayhem was caused by the inability to flick a single switch.

Between brutal hailstorms, engine malfunctions, and “drunk or stoned” flight attendants, there’s already a lot to worry about every time you board a plane. Now, unfortunately, it looks like you can add “pilots accidentally subjecting you to an oxygen-deprived death chamber” to the list.

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The post Passengers Bled from Their Ears After Pilots ‘Forgot’ to Pressurize Plane appeared first on VICE.

And yet, there are times now and then when a perfect storm of microbes inside a body create a reaction that produces a smell that is so bad, so heinous, so brutally awful that all other smells pale in comparison. This week, an unfortunate man on a Dutch flight reportedly suffered that kind of rare BO fate—and managed to reek so bad that the flight had to make an emergency landing, the UK’s Mirror reports.

This was no ordinary body odor. This was some kind of chemical weapons-grade stench. The unnamed man was on his way from Amsterdam to the Spanish island of Gran Canaria when his scent reportedly overwhelmed the Transavia airline’s cabin so horribly that fellow passengers started yakking. Others fainted, their own bodies apparently deciding that the only way to deal with the smell was to slip into the sweet embrace of unconsciousness.

“It was like he hadn’t washed himself for several weeks,” a passenger named Piet van Haut told the Mirror. “Several passengers got sick and had to puke.”

The flight crew, not knowing what to do, reportedly tried to usher the guy into an airplane bathroom in hopes that it would quarantine his smell, but the frail lavatory accordion doors were no match for the herculean smell. As passengers retched and blacked out, the pilot decided that there was only one thing left to do, and the plane made an emergency stop in southern Portugal to unload the sad, stinky man.

Transavia’s official statement said the flight made its emergency landing because of “medical reasons,” but an airline spokesman conceded to the Mirror that “it is indeed right that he smelled quite a bit.”

It’s unclear if the smelly guy ever did make it to his final island destination or if he was dipped into a Lysol bath by Portugal airline security and banished back to Amsterdam, but in any case, he should probably take a long, hard look at his diet and bathing regimen before flying again.

As the Mirror points out, this isn’t even the first time an awful stench has plagued a Transavia flight recently—earlier this year, a farting passenger caused a full-on brawl inside one of the airline’s planes and caused a similar emergency landing. So maybe Transavia should look into some better ventilation systems or something. Or we should all just stop flying, because, good lord, sky travel is a monumental nightmare.

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The post A Man Allegedly Smelled So Terrible His Flight Had to Make an Emergency Landing appeared first on VICE.

No one was hurt when the window cracked from the outside, and oxygen masks weren’t even deployed on the plane. In fact, the incident was so minor that the FAA didn’t even consider it an emergency. Still, passengers reported the incident as “scary,” and that it had caused a loud noise, according to CNN.

An airline spokesperson said in a statement that the aircraft will undergo a “maintenance review,” and that Southwest was working to get flight WN957’s 76 passengers home. However, she did not explain why a window with “multiple layers of panes” managed to crack while the aircraft was flying at 26,000 feet.

“The flight landed uneventfully in Cleveland,” she said, according to the New York Post.

Although everyone made it safely to the ground, the news is harrowing as it comes less than a month after a passenger was killed when the engine on another Southwest plane exploded in the middle of a flight. In case you managed to erase that Final Destination–worthy story from your brain, a woman was partially sucked out of a window when it happened, passengers say.

But before you panic and consider going all-in on Amtrak, it’s important to remember that the April 17 incident marked the first passenger death aboard a plane in nine years. Oh, and that trains are also a nightmare right now. Apparently, there’s no safe way to get anywhere anymore.

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The post A Southwest Plane Made an Emergency Landing After Window Cracked Mid-Flight appeared first on VICE.

As speculations swirl surrounding Prince’s untimely death Thursday at 57, TMZ has reported that the pop star was hospitalized for a drug overdose just last week.

Six days before his death, reports surfaced that Prince’s private jet had to make an emergency landing in Moline, Illinois, following a concert in Atlanta on April 15. He left just three hours after being admitted to the hospital, providing fans a collective sigh of relief.

Although reps from the musician’s entourage initially said Prince had been battling the flu, TMZ is now reporting he may have been treated for a Percocet overdose. According to sources close to the late icon, Prince had allegedly ingested the drug before his Atlanta concert, taking so much that EMT respondents had to administer a “save shot” to reverse the opiate’s effects.

TMZ had also taken photos of Prince a week before his death visiting his local pharmacy. Sure, that could just mean he was out of paper towels or toothpaste, but the website speculates that he could have been refilling prescriptions for hip issues.

Prince’s autopsy is scheduled for Friday, which could shed more light on how the beloved icon died.

UPDATE 4/22/16: An earlier version of this article included a photoshopped image of Prince that many found to be in poor taste given the circumstances. We agree and have removed it.

The post Prince Allegedly OD’d on Percocet the Week Before His Death appeared first on VICE.

The WestJet Boeing 737-700 carrying 54 passengers and five crew members landed in Winnipeg, instead. Six passengers sustained “non-life threatening injuries during the emergency evacuation” WestJet wrote on its Facebook page, and some were transported to hospital for treatment.

Authorities have not yet disclosed the type of threat against flight WS422, but police are investigating.

Joel Gupta, a passenger on the plane, told CTV Winnipeg they weren’t given any information about the threat that caused the diversion.

“All of a sudden they made an emergency evacuation warning and said, ‘Evacuate, evacuate, evacuate,'” he told the television channel. “Everybody rushed to the doors and jumped off the plane; either went down the slide or slid down the wing.”

On Saturday, another WestJet flight, this time from Halifax to Edmonton, was forced to land in Saskatoon because someone called in a bomb threat. While in the air, the passengers were told that the reason behind their impromptu stop was an “operating issue.”

“The whole atmosphere on the plane was calm. Everybody was pretty good,” passenger Rob Tomlinson told CBC News. “I think they maybe just made it sound like an operational issue just for the sake of keeping everybody calm.” Once on the ground the plane was evacuated and no explosives were found. Saskatoon police, decked in 80 pound protective suits, personally evacuated cats off the flight.

On Thursday night, Air Canada Flight 143 from St. John’s to Ottawa never got off the ground when a bomb threat was found on a note in the plane’s bathroom as it was about to leave the gate. The St. John’s International Airport immediately shut down and all other planes were turned away from landing. The airport reopened three hours later after a thorough search.

In each case, no bomb or explosives were found near or on the planes and they were all cleared by authorities. 

There is currently no reason to think that these incidents are linked and all three cases are being investigated.

Follow Mack Lamoureux on Twitter: @macklamoureux

The post Third Canadian Flight in Under a Week Grounded Due to ‘Threat’ appeared first on VICE.

Image via Wiki Commons.

I don’t like to fly. I don’t like that I can’t get fresh air. I don’t like that I can’t use the bathroom without the entire cabin seeing me. I mostly travel alone and have never once sat next to a remotely attractive person. I don’t like that my entire life is in the hands of someone whose face I never see and name I don’t know. I don’t like that I can’t ask him how many hours of sleep he got the night before or the last time he drank alcohol. Has he recently had some sort of personal catastrophe that might distract him from flying a 75-ton piece of machinery through the sky? Even though the National Safety Council puts your odds of dying in “Air and Space Transport Incidents” at 1:8,015 (for reference, your odds of dying in a car crash are 1:112), that’s little comfort as you’re in a several-ton hunk of machinery improbably hanging above the Earth. Your entire life is out of your control and once you go up there is only one way down. The only part of flying I do like is landing safely at my destination.

Last month, my “irrational” fears became reality. I took a United Express flight from Monterey, California on my way to meet up with some friends in Punta Mita, Mexico. I had one stop at LAX before getting to my final destination. That flight turned out to be this one. Here’s what was going through my head:

It’s a quick, one-hour flight, so I decide to save my emergency Xanax for the LA to Mexico portion of my journey. Soon enough, the captain announces we’re starting our descent into LAX. We circle the airport twice, which is slightly unsettling. I look around to see if the flight attendant has some sort of explanation to offer. Nothing. Since we’re coming from a small airport, maybe we’re waiting for a runway to open up? I return to my book.

The captain makes a long, inaudible announcement. The flight attendant walks to the back half of the plane. Turns out our landing gear hasn’t come down. She says it could be a computer error, so we’re going to fly very low past the tower at LAX to see if the landing gear is down but just not registering to the system. It is at this point that I feel butterflies in my stomach.

A man behind me jokes to his friend, “Thanks for the relaxing weekend.” They both chuckle. I am not chuckling. I start to feel a slow boil of panic. We fly past the tower and go back up in the air. No landing gear. I begin to shake. The flight attendant answers the phone that links to the cockpit. Her face goes white, and I decide it’s time to completely freak the fuck out.

On Motherboard: Every Day Over the US, Eleven Airplanes Are Hit By Lasers

I reach for my emergency Xanax. My mouth is dry, so I chew it. Besides, won’t that make it work faster anyway? The flight attendant announces that we’re making an emergency landing. She explains that we are going to dump fuel to “reduce our chance of a fire.” Reduce. Not prevent. Reduce.

A man shouts, “Can’t we land in the water?!” No. She tells us, “If you see smoke in the cabin open the emergency exits and get everyone out.” She shows us how to get into the “brace position,” with our heads tucked between our legs.

The fire department and emergency responders are on the scene, she claims. And with that, she heads to the front of the plane and straps herself into her seat, closing her eyes. The grimness of our situation consumes me.

I turn my phone on and have one bar of service. I start to compose a text to my fiancé. What do you say in a situation like this? I see the news helicopters from the window, and worry he’ll find out before I can reach him. I tell him I’m on the plane and that we might be making an emergency landing. I tell him I love him and that I’ll text him when I land. The truth is I don’t know if I’ll be able to text him when I land.

The cabin is quiet as we make our descent. I’m not a religious person, but I silently pray. I put my head down to brace. As we approach the ground, the only thing I hear is the flight attendant screaming, “BRACE, BRACE, BRACE, BRACE.”

We touch the runway. The impact is loud, but not as rough as I had anticipated. Under my breath, I softly chant please stop, please stop, please stop. The plane finally does.

The flight attendant shouts, “Is everyone OK?” No one is on fire. So, yes.

We all cheer and clap, but we’re cut short and told to get off immediately. As we exit the plane I see firefighters and emergency vehicles surrounding us. Sitting on its belly, the plane looks like a beached whale. I take my phone out to snap a photo, but I’m shaking so violently that it flies out of my hands.

Photo by the author.

Trembling and crying, I call my fiancé and my sister. Everyone else around me seems fine. I can’t tell if I’m freaking out because I am totally emotionally unstable, or if everyone else appears calm because they had staved off the reality of what could have happened to us.

A firefighter brings my purse and laptop to me, and I run the two terminals to make my connecting flight to Mexico by five minutes. I sleep the entire way.

The question I’ve been asked the most about my experience is what the airline gave the passengers as compensation. The answer is a bullshit letter of apology from a VP of Customer Relations, who explained that since the reaction to the incident on the ground was “largely positive” the final decision for us was apology only. [Editor’s Note: When contacted by VICE, United sent the following statement: “We issued a letter to all customers onboard to apologize and ensure them that safety is always our first priority. Following any travel experience, we work individually with customers on a case-by-case basis taking into account the circumstances of their travel journey to provide further assistance when appropriate.”] Technically, an airline is not liable in a crash unless it’s proven they did not take all the necessary precautions to prevent the accident, and to be fair, the reaction was “largely positive,” but only because we were all happy to be not dead.

After I told them I thought their letter of apology was absolute horseshit, they threw in a $150 flight voucher which, for obvious reasons, I will not be using.

Follow Laura on Twitter.

The post This Is What It’s Like to Be in a Plane That Has to Make an Emergency Landing appeared first on VICE.