WATCH: Airplane on flight over Colorado Rockies lands safely while pilot was ‘incapacitated’

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Driverless cars are becoming more and more common. They run on cameras, sensors, programs and artificial intelligence. They, in fact, do crash on occasion, but so do those with humans behind the wheel.

And while those vehicles without a flesh-and-blood driver may make people a little nervous, likely that’s nothing next to the idea of being in an airplane without a pilot.

Or with a pilot who is incapacitated, as happened on Colorado flight recently.

Officials have revealed that a flight landed at Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport in Broomfield, northwest of the Denver city center, using Garmin’s automated landing tech.

The pilot fell incapacitated shortly after takeoff, but no details on his condition were revealed. Nor was any information released on passengers.

It was a report on Denver’s Channel 7 that explained the software “takes complete control of the flight to land the airplane in an emergency where the pilot is unable to fly.”

North Metro Fire Rescue was on hand and took video:

The safe landing happened over the weekend.

The report said it was “the first time the company’s version of the technology has been used in a real-world emergency situation.”

The airplane was a Beechcraft Super King Air 200 flown by Buffalo River Aircraft Services and equipped with Garmin’s Emergency Autoland system.

It left Aspen at 1:43 p.m. Saturday and landed about half an hour later, and 100 miles away, at RMMA.

Authorities at the airport said there was nothing to report as the plane landed safely without incident.

Garmin officials confirmed while landing programs have been around for a long time, this was the first activation and landing of their program in an actual emergency.



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