Pilot thought instructor who died mid-flight was kidding

A flight instructor died after suffering a heart attack mid-flight over England last summer — but the pilot thought his colleague was just pretending to be asleep as a joke, according to a new report.

The unsuspecting aviator continued the flight in a 1978 Piper PA-28-161, with the instructor’s head slumped over his shoulder, and landed safely at Blackpool Airport in Lancashire on June 29.

It was not until the pilot tried to get the instructor up that he realized the 57-year-old man was dead, a bulletin released earlier this month by the UK’s Air Accident Investigation Branch stated.

An autopsy found that the unnamed instructor, who had a history of high blood pressure and had been taking medication for his condition for two decades, had suffered an acute cardiac failure — four months after passing a physical.

Safety experts warned that although the pilot was able to land the plane without incident, “had this occurred on another flight the outcome could have been different.”

The pilot asked the instructor to join him on the flight on the morning of June. 29 because the crosswind that day was above his personal limit to fly alone, according to the four-page report dated Feb. 9.

The instructor agreed to join after finishing a trial lesson with three other people.

“The pilot recalled that during the taxi they were talking normally,” the report stated. “He recalled telling the instructor he would keep the aircraft into wind for the power checks and the instructor replying, ‘Looks good, there is nothing behind you.’ The pilot did not recall the instructor saying anything else after this point.”

Shortly after takeoff, the pilot noted that the instructor’s head “rolled back.”

“The pilot knew the instructor well and thought he was just pretending to take a nap whilst the pilot flew the circuit, so he did not think anything was wrong at this stage,” the bulletin read.

Even after the instructor’s head slumped on the pilot’s shoulder, he “still thought the instructor was just joking with him and continued to fly the approach.”

When the plane landed and the instructor still would not wake up, the pilot finally realized that something was amiss and summoned airport personnel, including firefighters and medics, who tried in vain to revive the instructor.

The man’s post-mortem exam showed that his arteries were clogged with fat and that he had a blood clot in one of his arteries.

The instructor had a valid commercial pilot’s license and had racked up a total of 8,876 flying hours over his career.

People who had spoken to the instructor on the morning of his death said “he was his normal cheerful self,” according to the report.

There were no signs that the instructor was feeling unwell. The three people who had flown with him for the trial lesson just before the fateful flight reported that he “seemed well.”