Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Lie To Fly’ On FX, About The Alaska Airlines Pilot Who Tried To Crash A Plane While Coming Down From Magic Mushrooms

Lie To Fly is a New York Times Presents documentary, produced and directed by Carmen García Durazo, examines the case of Joe Emerson, a pilot for Alaska Airlines who, in October of 2023, tried to shut down the engines of a flight where he was sitting in the flight deck jump seat. It turned out that Emerson had taken psychedelic mushrooms two days before that flight and was still feeling the effects when he made the move to grab the engine shutdown levers.

“Actually Frightening”: True Crime Fans Stunned By Physical Resemblance Between Scott Peterson And ‘Gone Girl’s Ben Affleck

‘The Greatest Love Story Never Told’ Hits Different Now That Jennifer Lopez Has Filed For Divorce From Ben Affleck

The Gist: In the documentary, Duran interviews Emerson about, his love of flying, his career, and the sudden death of his best friend, which sent him into a mental health spiral that culminated in the October incident. But it’s also about how pilots who are suffering from mental health issues would rather lie to the FAA and/or not seek treatment in order to keep flying. Because of personnel shortages, the agency can put a pilot on deferment for upwards of two years while his or her medical case is reviewed; the minimum is usually six months. But because pilots are grounded as soon as they are prescribed SSRIs, many often don’t even seek treatment.

Durazo also talks to the parents of a young pilot named John Hauser, who was in a similar situation; he was having mental health issues, but felt trapped because if he got help and the medication he needed, he’d be grounded. Hauser ended up killing himself by crashing the small plane he was flying.

CLICK HERE TO GET EMAILS FROM DECIDER

In the case of Emerson, he took those mushrooms on a retreat with his friends that weekend, but because of his state of mind, the Psilocybin severely affected his thought process, to the point where, even two days later, he wasn’t sure what was real and what wasn’t. As a pilot, he was able to sit in the flight deck jump seat on the Alaskan Airlines flight, and as we hear from audio from the flight deck, as well as Emerson’s recollection, the whole thing took 30 seconds and was quickly deescalated. He even volunteered to be cuffed because he wasn’t sure what he’d do next.

Emerson was at first indicted of 83 counts of attempted murder, but those charges were dropped after a mental health evaluation. He still faces federal charges as well as charges in Oregon, and he lost his job. But his case did prod small changes as to how the FAA treats mental health issues with flight crews, with more changes in the offing.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Like most of the other episodes in The New York Times Presents series, Lie To Fly does a good job of boiling down a complex issue into an well-organized hour. Other good docs in this series are How To Fix A Pageant and Framing Britney Spears .

Performance Worth Watching: The interviews with Joe Emerson and his wife Sarah are fascinating, because they paint a picture of a man who was obviously suffering, but trapped because if he got the help he needed, he wouldn’t be able to do the job he loved.

Memorable Dialogue: Joseph LoRusso, an aviation lawyer who got involved in Emerson’s case, decries how poor the “media outreach” was on the case, with the first clip we see being from Fox News calling the incident a “domestic Kamikaze attack.” LoRusso considers Emerson “a martyr,” because his case is what happens when a mental health issue goes untreated because a person fears for his job.

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Duran, the director of Lie To Fly , doesn’t take the sensationalistic approach with Emerson’s story. Yes, the incident he was involved in was well-publicized, but Duran doesn’t give into how it was sensationalized, where it seemed that most news outlets played up the psychedelic mushroom angle to make Emerson seem like he was this insane, wacked out, delusional person that was actively shutting down the engines and being wrestled to the floor.

She takes a more sensible approach, going through what Emerson was facing, including the death of his friend, in the time leading up to the incident. He was also very forthcoming with what the state of his mind was during the incident, what brought him back from the brink — physical touch — and showing exactly how brief the incident really was. He wasn’t tripping out and he wasn’t a “Kamikaze”, as Fox classified the incident; Joe Emerson was a man who was mourning and in pain, unable to get treatment because he knew the consequences of doing so.

The entire issue of how the FAA’s mental health protocols promote pilots and other flight crew members from even seeking treatment gets a little muddled, because the procedure is so complex. But when LoRusso mentions that the agency treats someone who is being treated with medication for depression or anxiety but is otherwise stable the same as someone being treated for schizophrenia, the problem comes into focus.

Yes, the FAA is erring on the side of safety, but, as NTSB chairperson Jennifer Homendy says, their protocols are in the “dark ages.” We would have liked a little more examination as to why that is, which is likely to do with the increase of the number of people being diagnosed with mental health issues. The commensurate increase in cases the short-staffed FAA had to review likely led to the delays that in turn led to pilots and other flight crew to not even seek treatment. It’s a Mobius strip of better understanding of mental health feeding into government inadequacy and back again that seems to be an all-too-familiar story, and we would have liked to have heard more about that.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Lie To Fly takes a sensationalistic incident from the recent past and gives a more complete picture of what caused and led up to it, with a sympathetic portrait of the man at the incident’s center. It’s an informative documentary that will certainly make viewers think hard about what the people flying them everywhere might be dealing with.

Joel Keller ( @joelkeller ) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

For more entertainment news and streaming recommendations, visit decider.com