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I was on a flight where one of the pilots had a heart attack and got to experience weightlessness or close to it for a few seconds. Cool to think about what that felt like now but in moment.. not so much. Anyway, the pilot survived and the delay was surprisingly short given the circumstances.

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I had something like this happen once too.

“Attention passengers, this is your captain speaking. I’m not feeling well. The first officer will be landing the plane as soon as possible.”

I was quite surprised how quickly they can safely and smoothly lane a plane when there’s urgency. We were at the gate with paramedics waiting within 10-15 minutes from cruise altitude, and we still had to backtrack 100 miles or so to the airport.

Overall delay was only about 2 hours which was mostly finding another pilot on short notice.

“This is your backup pilot speaking. Our captain has gone into cardiac arrest, but we will dive to 10,000 feet and give him a bit of the old spicy bra and have him right back up and you back on schedule in no time!”

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