Yesterday afternoon a JetBlue Airways flight from New York to Las Vegas was forced to divert to a landing in Amarillo Texas when one of the pilots, the Captain of the Airbus 320 began acting erratic and was locked out of the cockpit by the First Officer. Likely air traffic controller training came into play at some point during the communication efforts to report the Pilot.
Millions of television viewers were able to watch video of the Jetblue Pilot (Captain) yesterday, as he was eventually subdued by passengers and flight attendants, from mobile phone videos taken by passengers onboard the plane. The videos have been posted on numerous internet sites like youtube.
According to a CBS News report today, authorities are currently looking into the personal background of the JetBlue Captain with the potential of filing federal charges against the pilot.
The Captain has been identified as Clayton Osbon. Yesterday, JetBlue said only that the issue was due to a medical issue, but would not comment further. The company, as well as many passenger witnesses onboard, did however praise the rest of the crew stating that their actions were exactly what should have been done in such a situation.
From reports by witnesses, the First Office locked the captain out of the cockpit when he went to the bathroom because he felt the captain was acting erratic. The First Officer had informed the flight attendants of the situation and had also coordinated with them to have an off duty JetBlue pilot who was riding in the back of the plane to come up and help fly the airplane.
Once the captain realized he was locked out, the reported meltdown ensued with the Captain banging on the cockpit door and shouting about needing to get the plane down, and using words like “bomb” and “afganistan” according to passengers, before being restrained by passengers and crew.
After landing Osbon was taken into custody and escorted to a nearby hospital for evaluation.