Most of our airline flights are very smooth and pleasant experiences.
They usually are comfortable, accompanied by the polite and friendly services of attendants offering food and drinks.
But in an alarming contrast last Tuesday, there was a very different situation on a JetBlue Airways flight from New York to Las Vegas.
Can you even imagine seeing the pilot, the captain of the plane, storming through the passenger compartment, shouting, as one passenger recalled to The Associated Press, "They're going to take us down. They're taking us down. They're going to take us down. Say the Lord's prayer. Say the Lord's prayer"?
Well, in a scary incident this week, it was not an imaginary situation -- but a very real one.
The captain flying the plane reportedly had a "medical situation," according to the airline. Obviously disoriented, he went through the cabin, muttering threats about Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan. One passenger later told a newspaper, "He started screaming about al-Qaida and possibly a bomb on the plane and Iraq and Iran, and about how we were all going down."
The distraught captain was tackled by several of the passengers as he tried to re-enter the cockpit -- though the co-pilot, still flying the plane, fortunately had locked the cockpit door.
Three passengers pinned the captain down and sat on him -- for 20 minutes -- until the airliner landed safely at Rick Husband Amarillo International Airport in Texas.
It surely was a flight that the passengers -- and other crew members -- never will forget.