A woman with no formal training sprung into action and landed a small plane in Bakersfield Friday after her husband — the pilot — suffered a heart attack.
“To my knowledge, this is unprecedented,” Kern County Airports Director Ron Brewster told Inside Edition. “I’ve never seen that in my entire career.”
The plane, a twin-engine Beechcraft King Air 90, had taken off from Henderson, Nevada, and was heading to Monterey when the pilot suffered a heart attack, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
The pilot, Eliot Alper, and his wife, Yvonne Kinane-Wells, were married in Henderson in February, just months before the incident.
Kinane-Wells, a real estate agent, personal trainer and triathlete, handled the situation calmly, managing to land the plane with the help of air traffic control, audio recordings show.
The plane landed at Meadows Field Airport in Bakersfield around 1:40 p.m., according to an FAA news release.
In audio recordings broadcast by Inside Edition, an air traffic controller can be heard giving him instructions on altitude and bearing. She answers briefly and in the affirmative.
On LiveATC.net recordings reviewed by the Times, controllers and pilots can be heard working together to monitor the plane and keep Kinane-Wells’ radio clear for emergency communications.
A controller talks about an incapacitated pilot and a “passenger in the cockpit trying to figure out how to fly”, asking others to monitor the situation.
“I don’t want to say this about the pilot’s monitoring frequency, but it looks like the wheels are partially off,” says another, suggesting that the ground crew be alerted. He suggests relaying the information on other channels “so she doesn’t panic.”
Alper, 78, was hospitalized and eventually died, his office told the Las Vegas Review Journal.
