ESPN’s Brian Windhorst details horrifying in-flight story with plane making drastic move just minutes in

ESPN reporter Brian Windhorst had a terrifying in-flight experience Monday when his American Airlines flight from Omaha to Los Angeles had to make an emergency landing due to a suspected invasion in the cockpit.

During Tuesday’s installment of “The Hoop Collective” podcast, Windhorst explained that he “kind of stumbled into national news” after his plane was surrounded by police when it landed due to the pilots declaring an emergency because they lost communication with the flight attendants.

“About 10 minutes into the flight, all of a sudden we took a very hard U-turn,” Windhorst said, adding that he’s taken that flight “dozens” of times. “And I always sit by the window, I always have it open… I was just trying to sign onto the WiFi, you know how it takes about 10 minutes to get over about 10,000 feet get, especially if you’re on a regional jet and they got janky wireless, which it does. And right as we’re doing the U-turn, I’m like, this ain’t right… we’re no longer going up.

“So I’m like, ‘Something is going on,’ and then as I was trying to sign into the WiFi, it said how many minutes were left on the flight. It should have been about three hours and 15 minutes, and instead it said 14 minutes.”

At this point, the veteran NBA reporter explained that his concern grew as the plane was redirected back to the airport in Omaha.

Windhorst recalled seeing flight attendants at the front of the plane banging on the cockpit door — and red lights that he had not noticed were glaring.

That’s when he began worrying about the plane and wondering if the pilot had suffered a medical issue.

“We land, no problem with the landing,” he said. “To me, the drama is kind of over, I don’t know what’s going on, but we landed safely. We immediately pull over to a holding pad by the terminal. As we’re pulling into the pad, the plane gets surrounded by police. There are also an ambulance and a firetruck… I can see there are more police cars coming in at speed.

“This is not a medical thing now. It’s now a police thing. But there is nothing happening in the cabin, and there is still no announcement. Nobody said anything.”

The incident turned out to be a false alarm.

“The flight attendants accidentally left the microphone open and the pilots were hearing static and rustling around… and the banging on the cockpit door… So the pilots declared an emergency and told the air traffic control,” he explained.

SkyWest confirmed a problem with “a flight crew mic” on Tuesday, adding, “We apologize for the inconvenience.”

Flight 6469 took off for Los Angeles nearly five hours late, according to the flight tracking website FlightAware.