SPOOKY, PLANE FLOWN BY DEAD PILOT?

If the phraseology, 'Dead on arrival" ever had meaning prior; it amplified today at Newark Liberty International Airport New Jersey when it really came to live! A plane with 247 passengers on board landed safely at about 11.47 a.m., without the passengers having any inkling that their pilot was dead as a door knob and stretched out cold, hurdled out in the crew section of the plane? Sounds spooky, you bet; especially when this is not a Halloween fable but a real life event which unfolded today over the Atlantic Ocean en-route Newark from Brussels, Belgium.

According to the story, the pilot of a Boeing 777 Continental Airline, Flight 61 collapsed and died mid-air over the Atlantic Ocean; and was eased out of the pilot's seat before the co-pilot and relief pilot took over controls and managed the aircraft for the rest of the flight and landed it safely at the airport. But unbeknownst to the 247 passengers in the belly of the airplane, their plane had landed without the pilot who took them airborne being alive; as he had died some hours into the eight hour trans-Atlantic flight while on the controls?

Efforts to revive the pilot by a Belgian physician, Dr. Julien Struyven, 72, a cardiologist, who was aboard the aircraft failed and he was later pronounced dead. His dead body was moved into an empty seat in a crew rest area, while the co-pilot and relief pilot respectively took turns for the remainder of the flight; with the dead captain watching over their operations from the land beyond? The deceased pilot, Craig Lenell, 60, of Texas, had been with Continental Airlines for 32 years and was said to have died of natural causes of a possible massive heart attack/failure.

Spooky as it may sound, but this was not the first time, a pilot had given up the ghost mid-air while flying an airplane? Two months ago in Florida, a passenger with some pilot training took the controls of a twin-engine Beechcraft King Air B200 heading to Jackson, Mississippi, with four people on board after the pilot died, and the passenger landed the plane safely with help from ground controllers. And in 2007, another Continental pilot, who was 57, died shortly after taking off on a flight from Houston to Mexico, but a co-pilot and private pilot safely landed that plane with 210 passengers on board. In May 2000, Taiwanese airline China Airlines was forced to turn back shortly after take off when the pilot suffered a heart attack. The copilot returned the plane to the airport and the pilot died shortly after arriving at a hospital. In March 1997, a Gulf Air Airbus A-320 skidded at Abu Dhabi airport after a pilot had a heart attack right at take-off.

Icheoku says, thank God for co-pilots otherwise the fate of the 247 passengers would have certainly been different. With what happened today, is it possible that Air France Flight 447 suffered similar fate regarding its pilots, that no mayday or any distress call was made and/or received? But with hope of the black-box recovery almost forgone, the world of aviation may never resolve what it was that dealt the devastating blow to Air France 447. Icheoku congratulates the crew for professionally bringing the airplane to a safe landing without panicking or spooking the passengers. To the family of Craig Lenel, our condolences; and to Continental Airlines, sorry for the loss of your captain.