It was an unusual flight for the passengers aboard of an Air Canada plane heading from Toronto to London, as rather strange circumstances forced the pilot to make a forced landing on Shannon airport, Ireland. Witnesses recall the co-pilot acting loud and angry, and most of all, calling for God, which forced his colleagues and an off-duty Canadian Armed Forced member to remove him from the cabin and restrain him.

The Passengers of the AC848 will probably not forget this trip too soon, despite the fact that the airline spokesman Peter Fitzpatrick said their safety or the safety of the crew had never been compromised. The pilot acted under standard procedure when he made the decision to land on the Irish airport, and the co-pilot was immediately rushed to the psychiatric unit of the Mid-Western Regional Hospital in Ennis, Co Clare.

The questions we now ask ourselves is: who is to blame if an incident similar to this actually ends up killing hundreds of people? How serious do pilots and airlines associations take the psychiatric evaluations? What are the measures to be taken so that the incident doesn’t repeat itself?

Captain Andy Wilson, president of the Air Canada Pilots Association, said according to timesonline.co.uk: “Although the illness of flight crew is rare, pilots are fully trained for such an event. The safe diversion was the result of the pilot following standard operating procedures in the professional manner that is expected of Air Canada pilots.”

That however doesn’t explain how the co-pilot passed the psychiatric evaluation tests. According to Transport Canada officials, pilots undergo annual health check-ups, but are not automatically submitted to psychiatric evaluations, which are not done “unless the GP decides a pilot needs to see a specialist,” a spokeswoman for Transport Canada stated.

If the 1999 incident, when 217 passengers aboard an Egypt Air flight from New York were killed after the co-pilot said he was putting his faith in God and simply drew the plane right into the Atlantic Ocean, did not raise alarm signals that procedures need to be changed, maybe this incident will.