The Federal Aviation Administration is not laughing at a video posted by a Colorado Rockies coach that showed him in one pilot’s seat as the team flew to Canada recently.
Colorado Rockies hitting coach Hensley Meulens was videoed in the cockpit of a United Airlines charter flight to Toronto last week.
“Had some fun in the cockpit on our flight from Denver to Toronto,” Meulens wrote in the caption of his since-deleted Instagram video, according to Yahoo Sports.
“Thanks to the captain and the first officer of our United charter that allowed me this great experience,” he wrote.
A copy of the video posted to X includes multiple voices speaking and shows Meulens sitting in one seat as he jokes about landing the plane.
“Flying the plane, here to Toronto,” Meulens said.
“I’m going to land the plane tonight, so relax,” he said, before noting that the plane was currently flying at 35,000 feet.
“I’m going to start descending it pretty soon,” he said.
In the video, he reaches toward the controls but never quite touches them.
United said it was “deeply disturbed by what we see in that video, which appears to show an unauthorized person in the flight deck at cruise altitude while the autopilot was engaged,” according to NBC News.
“As a clear violation of our safety and operational policies, we’ve reported the incident to the FAA and have withheld the pilots from service while we conduct an investigation,” United said.
A representative of the Federal Aviation Administration said it does not “comment on the details of open investigations” according to ESPN.
The FAA representative said, “federal regulations restrict flight deck access to specific individuals.”
The team said Friday it had no comment on the incident, according to the Denver Post.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.