Penguins Team Plane Returns to Salt Lake City After a Medical Episode Involving Ben Kindel

The Pittsburgh Penguins team plane turned back to Salt Lake City International Airport shortly after takeoff on Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2026, after forward Ben Kindel had a medical episode on board. The 19-year-old was taken by ambulance to University of Utah Hospital, and the team said he was “conscious, alert and in stable condition.”

In a statement on its NHL.com site, the club said team physician Dr. Dharmesh Vyas of UPMC and the team’s medical staff were on the flight and “immediately attended to Ben.” An ambulance was waiting when the aircraft landed.

The Penguins have not said what the episode was. They said the privacy of players’ families is a priority and that further updates would come “when appropriate.”

The team posted the statement on social media at 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, CBS Pittsburgh reported. At the time of writing on Oct. 22, no further update had been published.

What is known about the flight

The plane was taking the team home to Pittsburgh at the end of a four-game road trip, according to Associated Press reporting carried by ESPN. The night before, Kindel played 18 minutes and 53 seconds in a 5-4 loss to the Utah Mammoth.

An airport spokesperson told KSL that the aircraft was back on the ground shortly before noon. Airport officials also told the station that the plane refueled and left again shortly before 3 p.m.

Front office, coaching and medical staff stayed in Utah with Kindel while the rest of the team flew on to Pittsburgh, KSL reported, citing The Athletic. The Penguins next play the Florida Panthers at PPG Paints Arena on Thursday, Oct. 22.

Neither the team nor the airport has named the charter operator, the aircraft type, a flight number or a registration. The departure time has not been published either, so how long the jet was airborne is not known beyond the team’s “shortly after takeoff.”

The Penguins have flown on Delta Air Lines charters before. In September 2024, a maintenance problem with their Delta charter, a Boeing 757-200, postponed a preseason game in Detroit, Eye of the Flyer reported. Whether Delta flew this trip has not been confirmed.

Kindel, the 11th overall pick in the 2025 NHL Draft, is in his second season with Pittsburgh. He has two goals and two assists in nine games this season, the AP reported.

Why crews turn back for a medical emergency

A medical emergency shortly after departure gives a crew an unusually simple choice. The airport just left is close behind, it is a known field, and an ambulance can be arranged to meet the aircraft, which is what happened here.

Pressing on would have meant about 1,650 miles (2,660 km) to Pittsburgh along the great-circle route, a full cross-country flight. A diversion or return trades that time in the air for care on the ground.

A Flight Safety Foundation review of diversion research describes the decision as a balance between the medical resources near an airport and those available on board. It lists fuel load, weather and air traffic among the operational factors, and notes that crews may need to dump fuel before an emergency landing.

Whether this aircraft dumped fuel or landed overweight has not been reported. Having an ambulance waiting on arrival is something airline crews ask for too: in September, a PIA crew squawked 7700 into Manchester for exactly that reason.

The Penguins flight also carried something a scheduled flight usually does not: the team’s own doctor. On airline flights, crews can call ground-based medical advisers and ask for help from whatever volunteers happen to be aboard.

A study published in JAMA Network Open in September 2025 covered more than 77,000 in-flight medical events on 84 airlines in 2022 and 2023. It found one event for every 212 flights, and only 1.7% of events led to a diversion, according to Duke Health.

About 8% of the passengers involved were taken to the hospital after landing. Volunteers, often physicians, helped in nearly a third of the emergencies, and their involvement was linked to a higher chance of diverting, likely because they were called to the more serious cases.