Stewardess 'helped land Canada plane'

A CO-PILOT suffering a mental breakdown had to be forcibly removed from the cockpit of a Boeing 767 before a flight attendant helped the pilot make a safe landing.

The UK-bound Air Canada flight from Toronto, carrying 146 people, was forced to land at Shannon airport in Ireland during the emergency in January.

The pilot had noticed his colleague was not in good professional shape on the day of the flight, an Irish Air Accident Investigation Unit report said today.

As the aircraft was flying over the Atlantic he began talking in a "rambling and disjointed" manner, before the pilot summoned flight attendants to remove him from the cockpit.

The pilot then asked if any passenger was a qualified pilot. When none was found, one stewardess said she held a commercial pilot's licence.

The report did not include the psychiatric diagnosis for the co-pilot, who had 6,500 hours' flying time, and had passed a recent medical examination.

He spent 11 days in Irish mental wards before he was flown back to Canada.