#60: AIRPLANE! ✈️

✈️ TRAVEL - Passengers pin down Air Canada pilot after he suffers seizure during flight

🏫 EDUCATION - BC teacher banned 10 years for hugging, kissing, writing romantic poetry to student

🚓 CRIME - Toronto woman robbed by Romanian gypsies while sitting in her parked car

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⌛️ Today’s read is 2 minutes long.

Passengers aboard an Air Canada flight flew into a panic Wednesday after the pilot had a seizure in the middle of a flight.

A man on the flight told ABC News that the incident began shortly after the plane took off from an airport in Newark, New Jersey, en route to Halifax, Nova Scotia.

“The moment the plane swerved, I knew something was wrong because it was not turbulence,” said Rodney McDonald, who was traveling with his wife and two sons. 

“It really felt like someone had jilted the controls and then it happened over and over again. And, you know, every thought goes through your mind, you start praying. My boys instantly started praying.”

According to McDonald, a flight attendant rushed “frantically” into the cockpit and dragged the pilot out into the aisle.

McDonald and four other passengers then held the pilot down on the floor while the co-pilot redirected the plane to Boston.

“It was really horrifying,” said McDonald. 

“[We] worked to get him under control. It was a fairly strenuous 40 minutes of keeping him down and using as many seatbelts as we could to restrain his legs, arms, and chest."

The plane landed in Boston, where emergency responders rushed to meet the aircraft on the tarmac. 

All passengers made it safely off the flight.

“We're just grateful,” said McDonald, “grateful for how it all ended.”

A teacher at an independent BC school is banned for 10 years after carrying on an inappropriate relationship with a student, according to the provincial regulator.

According to a notice posted by the B.C. Commissioner for Teacher Regulation, Robert Ian Collett admitted to professional misconduct with a student he taught in grades 11 and 12.

The notice says Collett began emailing the student about school matters at the outset of the student's grade 12 year.

Throughout the year, Collett and the student reportedly “exchanged numerous emails that included romantic and intimate language” and “sexual content.”

Within a month after the student’s graduation, Collett and the student reportedly met at a restaurant, where they discussed personal matters, then went to a park, where they hugged and kissed.

Following the meeting at the park, the student emailed Collett asking him not to contact her again.

A few days later, he emailed her with a romantic “good-bye” poem.

The school fired Collett in 2023, and earlier this month he entered into an agreement with the BC Commissioner in which he admitted to professional misconduct and agreed to a 10-year ban on reapplication for a teaching certificate. 

Two Romanian women were arrested earlier this month after being accused of robbing a Toronto woman while she sat in her parked car.

Patricia Ghivea, 20, and Loredana Gardian, 23, allegedly approached a woman in a parking lot near Woodbine Downs Boulevard and Finch Avenue in late February and tried to distract her by offering her fake jewelry and a knockoff iPhone.

Police say they tried to remove the women’s real jewelry while distracting her, but when the woman resisted, they ripped gold chains off her neck before running away.

The woman sustained minor injuries.

Ghivea and Gardian, who were both “visiting” from Romania at the time of the alleged robbery, face a number of charges, including robbery with violence.

“We believe that in a lot of cases, these people are here on visitor visas, etc. and so that’s creating a much more difficult way that we have to locate them, find them,” said Toronto police Supt. Ron Taverner.

“For example, a lot of their drivers’ licences are still in their country of origin.”

Police believe Ghivea and Gardian are responsible for multiple other distraction thefts across the region.