Former pilot who took mushrooms, tried to shut down engines midflight pleads guilty

A former Alaska Airlines pilot pleaded guilty in federal court on Friday for trying to shut down the engines of a passenger plane in midair from a cockpit jump seat, prompting an in-flight emergency.

Joseph Emerson, 46, reached plea agreements in both his federal and state cases in Oregon stemming from the October 2023 flight, his attorney told ABC News.

He pleaded guilty to interference with flight crew members and attendants in federal court in Portland, online court records show.

In a court filing on the guilty plea, Emerson said he had used psilocybin, which is found in mushrooms, two days before the flight "and I was still suffering from the aftereffects of this drug."

"Although I was sitting in the jump seat and interacting with the flight crew, I believed I was either dreaming and felt an overwhelming need to wake up," he said in the filing. "In an effort to wake up from my 'dream' I knowingly pulled the dual fire extinguisher handles for the aircraft engines while the aircraft was flying."

"I knew that doing this would shut the engines off but at the time I felt that doing so would wake me up from my dream and I would be with my family," he continued. "When I grabbed the handles, I intimidated the flight crew who had to grab my hands and wrists to pull them away from the handles and restow them so the engines would not shut down. Thanks to the efforts of the competent and well-trained flight crew, the engines did not shut down and they safely landed the aircraft."

He is scheduled to be sentenced in the federal case on Nov. 17. He faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and a fine up to $250,000, according to the plea agreement.

Emerson also has a plea hearing scheduled Friday afternoon on his state charges. After initially facing dozens of attempted murder charges, he was indicted by a Multnomah County grand jury on 83 counts of recklessly endangering another person, a misdemeanor, and one count of endangering aircraft in the first degree, a felony.

Emerson previously admitted to taking psychedelic mushrooms two days before boarding a Horizon Air flight from Everett, Washington, to San Francisco, as an off-duty crew member on Oct. 22, 2023. He previously told ABC News that during the flight, he pulled two large red levers that could have shut down both engines while having difficulties discerning reality.

One of the pilots grabbed Emerson's wrist and they "physically struggled" for a short period, the federal plea agreement stated. The red engine shut-off handles were not pulled down all the way, and the engines were not turned off, according the plea agreement.

Emerson told one of the pilots, "I am not okay," the plea agreement stated. He was arrested after the flight diverted to Portland, telling police that mentally he was "in crisis" and had not slept for approximately 48 hours "and had the feeling that everything wasn't real," the plea agreement stated.

Emerson has called the incident the worst 30 seconds of his life.

"At the end of the day, I accept responsibility for the choices that I made. They're my choices," Emerson told ABC News in an August 2024 interview. "What I hope through the judicial processes is that the entirety of not just 30 seconds of the event, but the entirety of my experience is accounted for as society judges me on what happened. And I will accept what the debt that society says I owe."

Emerson was in Washington with a group celebrating the life of his best friend, Scott, a pilot who died while on a run several years earlier. The group took psychedelic mushrooms -- a drug that can make you hallucinate and typically has effects that last a few hours. Emerson said that for him, the physical side effects lasted days, and that while on the flight back home he felt like he was trapped and increasingly felt like nothing was real.

"There are two red handles in front of my face," Emerson recalled. "And thinking that I was going to wake up, thinking this is my way to get out of this non-real reality, I reached up and I grabbed them, and I pulled the levers."

His jail physician would later tell him that he suffered from a condition called hallucinogen persisting perception disorder, which can cause someone who uses psychedelic mushrooms for the first time to suffer from persistent visual hallucinations or perception issues for several days afterward.

In the wake of his arrest, Emerson and his wife started a nonprofit, Clear Skies Ahead, to raise funds for and awareness of pilot mental health.