No attempted murder charges for pilot accused of trying to crash a jetliner

A pilot accused of trying to crash an Alaska Airlines jetliner in Oregon will no longer face charges of attempted murder. A grand jury voted instead to indict the pilot, Joseph Emerson, on a felony charge of endangering an aircraft and 83 misdemeanor counts of reckless endangerment, officials said on Tuesday. Emerson was off duty during the flight, and was riding in the cockpit jump seat. Eighty-three other passengers and crew members were on board, and he was initially arrested on charges of attempted murder for each of them. The indictment supersedes those charges. Emerson said last month he had never intended to hurt anyone. He said he had been struggling to discern reality after consuming hallucinogenic mushrooms, which he had done for the first time two days earlier. Text messages showed his eagerness to get home to his family, and he described being overcome with the conviction that his time in the cockpit was not real. Emerson acknowledged that in trying to wake himself from what he believed was a dream, he reached up in the cockpit and pulled on the plane’s two fire-suppression handles, which are designed to shut down both engines in an emergency. The pilots managed to pull his hands away from the handles, and Emerson left the cockpit. The flight from Everett, Wash., to San Francisco was diverted to Portland, Ore., where Emerson was arrested.<br/>