Turkish Airlines pilot dies during flight from Seattle

According to data from tracking site Flightradar24, the flight flew over northern Canada before turning south, making a four-hour flight to New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport. Flight TK204 landed at JFK just before 6 a.m. Wednesday. The flight landed safely, the Federal Aviation Administration said.

Ustun said Pehlivan died before the plane landed. The pilot had been working with the airline since 2007 and passed a health test on August 3.

“As the Turkish Airlines family, we wish God's mercy to our captain and patience to his grieving family, all his colleagues and loved ones,” Ustun said, according to X translation from Turkish.

The aircraft has to be operated with two pilots on board. Usually a captain and a first officer share the task of flying the plane, sharing responsibility for handling control tasks and communicating with air traffic controllers. But having two pilots provides a backstop when one of them is incapacitated, and pilot unions have campaigned in recent years to block talks to weaken current requirements.

“Once again, life will remind us that having a pilot in the cockpit poses a profound risk to every passenger on an airplane,” said Dennis Tajer, spokesman for the Allied Pilots Association, which represents American Airlines pilots. “You don't have to be a pilot to understand how important it is to have human backup.”

Serious in-flight emergencies are rare on airliners. But over the past decade, several pilots have either been disabled or died while at the controls.

Last year, a pilot of Chilean carrier LATAM Airlines suffered a medical emergency after taking off from Miami and later died. And in 2022 a similar incident occurred shortly after an Envoy Air flight left Chicago. In both cases the rest of the crew managed to land the aircraft safely.

According to investigators, both pilots fell asleep on a flight in Indonesia in January. The plane gave way, but a pilot woke up and the flight continued.

Pilots typically don't train their planes to fly one-handed, Tajer said. That's hard to do, and he said pilots can call a flight attendant to help control the hard-to-reach tasks.

“It's hard to do on a clear sunny day. Throw in any other weather challenges or equipment malfunctions, and you've got a really big problem,” says Tajer.

Although some in the airline industry have explored the idea of ​​using a single pilot, regulators around the world are skeptical.

FAA chief Michael Whittaker said at an event hosted by a pilot union in September that he is committed to maintaining the current rules.

“Two well-trained, rested pilots on the flight deck are a key pillar of safety,” Whittaker said, according to the union.