Emergency workers tend to a JetBlue captain that had a “medical situation” during a Las Vegas-bound flight from JFK International airport, Tuesday, March 27, 2012, in Amarillo, Texas. Passengers said the pilot screamed that Iraq or Afghanistan had planted a bomb on the flight, was locked out of the cockpit, and then tackled and restrained by passengers. The pilot who subsequently took command of the aircraft elected to land in Amarillo at about 10 a.m., JetBlue Airways said in a statement. (AP Photo/Steve Douglas)PAUL J. WEBER,Associated Press
RUSS BYNUM,Associated Press
RICHMOND HILL, Ga. (AP) – No one recalls JetBlue Airways captain Clayton Osbon coming unhinged before. Not the airline that let him fly for 12 years, the neighbors in his secluded waterfront community or the friends he tried selling weight-loss shakes to on the side.
Now federal prosecutors have charged Osbon following his bizarre unraveling aboard Flight 191 to Las Vegas, describing in court records a midair breakdown they say began with cockpit ramblings about religion and ended with passengers wrestling him to the cabin floor.
Witness accounts of Osbon telling his co-pilot “things just don’t matter” and sprinting down the center aisle – yelling jumbled remarks about Sept. 11 and Iran – baffled longtime friends and fellow pilots who said they couldn’t remember previous health or mental problems.