A routine flight turned into a life-or-de.ath drama after a devoted wife found herself at the helm of a private plane after her pilot husband suffered a heart attack in mid-air.
Yvonne Kinane-Wells, 69, phoned air traffic control to help her attempt to land the propeller aircraft as her stricken husband, Eliot Alper, 78, lay slumped beside her.
Before Friday, the Las Vegas-based real estate agent had no prior flight experience but was left with no alternative as her husband was ‘incapacitated’, reports say.
The plane was on route from Henderson Executive Airport in Las Vegas to Monterey, California, when multi-millionaire real estate broker, Eliot, suffered the dire medical emergency.
Assuredly panicked and voice shaking Kinane-Wells confirmed the situation to air traffic control as audio obtained by Inside Edition reveals.
The agent can heard in the clip advising the terrified wife to ‘add a little bit of power,’ before redirecting her to the nearest airport, Meadows Field, in Bakersfield.
The plane, a two-engine Beachcraft King Air 90, sat around 5,900 feet altitude before air traffic control provided her with detailed step-by-step landing instructions.
‘We’re going to set you up so that as you level off from your turn, you’re going to be straight in for Bakersfield Airport. Is that alright?’ the agent directed Kinane-Wells.
She replied, ‘Okay,’ her voice trembling, just minutes before making her first and only emergency landing.
Aided by emergency crews that used their vehicles to intercept the plane, the wife used the entire 11,000 foot runway and then some as she safely and miraculously landed the plane.
The Kern County Fire Department responded to the scene where her immobilized husband was immediately carted off to the hospital, his current condition remains unknown.
The Federal Aviation Administration confirmed that ‘the passenger of a twin-engine Beechcraft King Air 90 landed at Meadows Field Airport in California around 1:40 pm local time on Friday, October 4, after the pilot had a medical emergency.’
‘The FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board will investigate. The NTSB will be in charge of the investigation and will provide all updates,’ the statement continued.