"The Flight Started Swerving Violently": Inside the Mid-Air Medical Emergency That Forced an Air Canada Captain From the Cockpit

A routine afternoon flight from Newark to Halifax turned into a genuine mid-air emergency on Wednesday, June 24, when the captain of Air Canada Express Flight 7664 suffered what witnesses described as a seizure mid-flight, was physically dragged from the cockpit by his first officer, and had to be restrained by fellow crew and passengers using seatbelts while the remaining pilot diverted the aircraft to Boston's Logan International Airport. All 61 people on board landed safely.

What Happened on Flight 7664

Air Canada Flight AC7664 — operated on Air Canada's behalf by its regional partner PAL Airlines, flying a De Havilland Dash 8-400 (Q400) turboprop — departed Newark Liberty International Airport at 12:39 PM on Wednesday, bound for Halifax Stanfield International Airport in Nova Scotia. Roughly an hour into the flight, the captain became suddenly and severely incapacitated.

Rodney McDonald, a passenger traveling with his family, told ABC News the first sign something was badly wrong came through the aircraft's movement itself. "The moment the plane swerved, I knew something was wrong," he said, adding that the motion "did not feel like turbulence." What followed happened quickly. "The flight started swerving violently. Within a few moments, flight attendants entered the cockpit frantically, and a few moments later he was dragging one of the pilots out of the cockpit," McDonald said. He described the captain as appearing to suffer a seizure and said the man "was not in control of his body." Once removed from the flight deck, the captain was not coherent, according to passengers, who said they used seatbelts to restrain his arms and legs until he came out of the medical episode around the time of landing.

Air traffic control communications captured the operational reality of the moment in stark terms: "The pilot is being manned, the flight is being manned by the co-pilot. The pilot is incapacitated," a voice can be heard saying on emergency radio traffic obtained by NBC New York.

The Diversion and Landing

With the captain removed from the flight deck, the first officer took sole control of the Q400 and declared the need to divert to the nearest suitable airport — Boston's Logan International Airport. Massachusetts State Police said emergency crews at Logan received an alert at approximately 1:37 PM local time after air traffic control reported a crew member experiencing a medical emergency aboard the inbound flight.

The aircraft landed safely at Logan at approximately 2 PM. Ambulances drove directly onto the runway to meet the plane, and a stretcher was brought to the cockpit. Video captured by news crews showed first responders carefully removing the captain from the aircraft within minutes of touchdown; he was visibly carried from the plane to a waiting ambulance. Boston EMS confirmed the captain was transported to Massachusetts General Hospital. No further details on his condition have been publicly released as of this writing.

Once the captain had been removed, the aircraft was towed to the gate and the remaining 61 passengers were able to disembark. Air Canada subsequently arranged a replacement crew, and the flight ultimately departed Logan Airport again around 7:30 PM Wednesday evening, landing safely in Halifax later that night — completing, more than seven hours late, the journey it had begun that afternoon.

Air Canada's Official Statement

Air Canada confirmed the broad outline of events in a statement: "During the flight, the captain experienced a medical issue and was removed from the flight deck as per safety protocols. The first officer took control of the aircraft and diverted the flight to Boston, where it landed safely. Pilots are trained to fly aircraft and land safely without the assistance of a second pilot."

That final sentence reflects a point that aviation safety experts were quick to reinforce publicly in the aftermath of the incident. Aviation expert Patrick Smith explained why the protocol exists and why it works reliably even in dramatic circumstances like Wednesday's: "A lot of people have this idea that a co-pilot is kind of an apprentice or there to lend a helping hand. That's not really how it works. Both pilots are fully qualified and can operate the airplane. To do so with one of the two pilots incapacitated would have increased the workload for another pilot," Smith said, adding that the favorable weather conditions in Boston that day "would have made things a little easier."

A Reminder of Built-In Redundancy

Commercial aviation's two-pilot cockpit requirement exists for precisely this kind of scenario — and Wednesday's diversion is one of the clearer recent real-world demonstrations of why that redundancy matters. Every captain and first officer on a commercial flight crew holds the full type-rating and certification required to operate the aircraft independently; the "first officer" designation reflects seniority and crew hierarchy, not a lesser level of qualification. When one pilot becomes incapacitated — whether through a medical episode like a seizure, sudden illness, or any other acute condition — the remaining pilot is trained and authorized to take full control, declare an emergency if necessary, and safely divert to the nearest appropriate airport, exactly as occurred on Flight 7664.

The Federal Aviation Administration confirmed the diversion was specifically attributed to a pilot medical emergency. Given the cross-border nature of the flight — operated by a Canadian carrier, departing from a US airport, destined for another Canadian airport, and ultimately diverting to a different US airport — both the FAA and Canada's Transportation Safety Board would typically be involved in reviewing an incident of this nature as a matter of standard regulatory practice, though no formal joint investigation findings have yet been published.

What Happens Next

The captain's specific medical condition has not been disclosed publicly, and Air Canada has not commented further beyond confirming the basic sequence of events. For the 61 passengers aboard, what began as a routine regional flight between Newark and Halifax became, for a frightening few minutes, a genuine test of the cockpit redundancy systems that commercial aviation has built specifically to handle exactly this kind of emergency — and, by every account from the flight, that system worked as designed. The first officer flew the aircraft safely to the ground. The captain received immediate medical attention. And every person on board the flight made it home.

Sources

1. CBS News Boston — Air Canada flight diverted to Boston's Logan Airport due to "incapacitated" captain
2. NBC New York — 'Incapacitated' pilot pulled from cockpit as Air Canada flight out of NJ diverts
3. AeroTime — Air Canada Express flight diverts to Boston after captain suffers 'seizure'
4. ABC7 New York (WABC) — Air Canada Flight AC7664 from Newark Airport diverts to Boston after captain suffers medical episode
5. ABC7 San Francisco — Air Canada Flight AC7664 from Newark Airport diverts to Boston after captain suffers medical episode
6. ABC7 Chicago — Air Canada Flight AC7664 from Newark Airport diverts to Boston after captain suffers medical episode