A United Airlines flight bound for Fairbanks made an emergency landing in Ketchikan on Saturday — and was soon followed by another United plane.
Flight 1850 left Denver at about 7:30 p.m. Saturday evening. United Airlines said that while in the air, a passenger experienced a medical issue. That’s when the plane was diverted to the Ketchikan International Airport.
United Airlines doesn’t normally fly in or out of Ketchikan, so many residents took to social media to share their surprise at seeing the plane coming in for landing.
Ketchikan Fire Chief Rick Hines said the 62-year-old male was having chest pains, but was in stable condition by the time the city’s fire department transported him to the local hospital. Hines said airlines are typically well-equipped with medication, but they obviously can’t provide more advanced treatments.
“I think it was a good sound decision to get on the ground, get him to a place where if he was having a heart attack, the hospital could open up those arteries,” said Hines.
A few hours after the diverted plane landed, a second United Airlines plane arrived. Scott Hildebrandt works as a firefighter and technician on the airport runway, and he said the original plane needed more oxygen to finish its trip to Fairbanks.
“We tried to find if anybody in town had some at the time, and nobody had the right size. They had a ferry flight, which is just an empty plane, going down to Houston from Anchorage. And they stopped in here, dropped off the oxygen bottles that they had picked up for them,” Hildebrandt said of the second United plane.
Hildebrandt said both planes were off to their destinations by about 2 a.m. Sunday. He said flights are occasionally diverted to Ketchikan for various reasons, like weather or medical emergencies.