United Airlines flights make emergency landings in Ketchikan

United Airlines Flight 1850 headed to Ketchikan. (flightradar24 image)

A United Airlines formation bound for Fairbanks made an emergency landing successful Ketchikan connected Saturday — and was soon followed by different United plane.

Flight 1850 near Denver astatine astir 7:30 p.m. Saturday evening. United Airlines said that while successful nan air, a rider knowledgeable a aesculapian issue. That’s erstwhile nan level was diverted to nan Ketchikan International Airport.

United Airlines doesn’t usually alert successful aliases retired of Ketchikan, truthful galore residents took to societal media to stock their astonishment astatine seeing nan level coming successful for landing.

Ketchikan Fire Chief Rick Hines said nan 62-year-old antheral was having thorax pains, but was successful unchangeable information by nan clip nan city’s occurrence section transported him to nan section hospital. Hines said airlines are typically well-equipped pinch medication, but they evidently can’t supply much precocious treatments.

“I deliberation it was a bully sound determination to get connected nan ground, get him to a spot wherever if he was having a bosom attack, nan infirmary could unfastened up those arteries,” said Hines.

A fewer hours aft nan diverted level landed, a 2nd United Airlines level arrived. Scott Hildebrandt useful arsenic a firefighter and technician connected nan airdrome runway, and he said nan original level needed much oxygen to decorativeness its travel to Fairbanks.

“We tried to find if anybody successful municipality had immoderate astatine nan time, and cipher had nan correct size. They had a ferry flight, which is conscionable an quiet plane, going down to Houston from Anchorage. And they stopped successful here, dropped disconnected nan oxygen bottles that they had picked up for them,” Hildebrandt said of nan 2nd United plane.

Hildebrandt said some planes were disconnected to their destinations by astir 2 a.m. Sunday. He said flights are occasionally diverted to Ketchikan for various reasons, for illustration upwind aliases aesculapian emergencies.