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BOSTON (WBZ) — There were some tense moments in the air on a flight from Los Angeles to Boston on Tuesday. Air traffic recordings captured a Delta captain alerting the tower that he was feeling sick and needed to get to a hospital.
It happened on Flight DL437 from LAX in Los Angeles to Logan International Airport in Boston. There were 147 customers on board the Boeing 757.
After the captain reported that he needed to go to the hospital, the flight was diverted and made an emergency landing at Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport. According to Delta, the captain was taken off the plane once it landed. Another crew boarded the plane and the flight resumed to Boston.
“This is the captain. I am the one who is ill. Um, I am going to taxi the jet to the gate and then I need to go to the hospital,” the captain can be heard telling the tower on an air traffic recording.
Former military and commercial pilot Matthew “Whiz” Buckley told CBS News Boston that the sick captain was the one on the radio because it allows the other pilot to concentrate on flying.
“In airliners, if you’re not flying, you’re the one doing the talking, because that allows, in this case, the first officer, to focus on just flying the airplane. So, yeah, that makes perfect sense as to why he’s communicating,” Buckley said. “They did this by the book, right? We talked through this. If any pilot is incapacitated or feeling incapacitated, like, ‘Hey man, this is pretty bad,’ you need to divert to the nearest suitable airfield.”
Delta released a statement about the incident, saying in part, “We apologize to our customers for this disruption in their travels.”
There is no word yet on the captain’s condition.
The flight landed in Boston only about 90 minutes behind schedule.
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