Passenger-turned-Pilot

It's the stuff of both dreams and nightmares, a scenario where the pilot is incapacitated and a passenger needs to take control, but it happened in real life earlier this year when Darren Harrison, a passenger in a Cessna Caravan, was returning from a fishing trip in the Bahamas. As the plane flew along, Harrison saw that the pilot had become incapacitated, and the plane quickly went into nosedive. Harrison instinctively knew he needed to act quickly or perish. It wasn't a miracle, but it was darn good airplane wrangling by someone with no experience doing any of it. He had to reach over the body of that pilot to wrest the controls from him and then get himself into the seat where the pilot had been and take control of the plane. Harrison did do a great job, but he likely wouldn't have been around to do the talk show circuit had it not been for controllers Chip Flores and Robert Morgan, who knew exactly what to tell Harrison by way of instruction and what  not to tell him. Their coaching and Harrison's natural talent resulted in a safe landing in Palm Beach. The pilot, who suffered a life-threatening cardiac event, has recovered.