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kalikshama -> RE: Jet Blue (3/30/2012 8:14:21 AM)
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Sounds like a psychotic break but why...?
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/29/us-usa-crime-jetblue-pilot-idUSBRE82R1GF20120329
TROUBLE IN THE COCKPIT
An affidavit by an FBI agent shows trouble for the flight started before the Airbus A320 took off from New York City's LaGuardia Airport enroute to Las Vegas with 141 passengers and crew.
Osbon was late arriving at the airport, and missed the routine pre-flight crew briefing, agent John Whitworth said in the affidavit. Whitworth said problems continued as the plane took off.
"Osbon talked about his church and needed to focus," Whitworth said in the affidavit. "Osbon began talking about religion, but his statements were not coherent."
The copilot grew nervous when Osbon told them that "things just don't matter" and began yelling over the plane's radio system, telling air traffic controllers to "be quiet," according to Whitworth's account in the affidavit. "The First Officer became really worried when Osbon said, ‘We need to take a leap of faith'," Whitworth said in the document. "Osbon started trying to correlate completely unrelated numbers and he talked about the sins in Las Vegas. At one point, Osbon told the (first officer), ‘We're not going to Vegas,' and began giving what was described as a sermon."
CHAOS IN THE CABIN
Passengers who were on the plane described a chaotic mid-flight scene in which a man in a JetBlue uniform, apparently locked out of the cockpit, began banging on the door and demanding to be let inside. Passengers subdued him.
"People behind me, a bunch of big guys, started going up there and trying to help, and we found out that the guy banging was actually the pilot, and he was trying to get into the cockpit because the other co-pilot had locked him out," passenger Grant Heppes told Reuters.
"Everybody seemed pretty nervous," he said. "Nobody was sure what was going on. Everybody seemed very concerned."
Osbon yelled jumbled comments about "Jesus, September 11th, Iraq, Iran and terrorists" while passengers converged on him, the affidavit said.
An off-duty pilot aboard the plane took Osbon's place at the controls as the plane made an emergency landing.
Barger said there had been no earlier signs of problems with the pilot.
"I've known the captain personally for a long period of time, and there's been no indication of this at all," Barger told NBC, adding that the pilot was a "consummate professional."
The incident was the second to involve erratic behavior by a JetBlue crew member since August 2010, when a flight attendant upset after an altercation with a passenger bolted from a plane by deploying and sliding down the inflatable emergency chute.
Lawyers for the flight attendant in that incident, Steven Slater, later told reporters he had acted in part out of frustration with the chaos of air travel and that he was under stress because his mother was suffering from lung cancer.
The incident also came just two weeks after a female flight attendant started ranting about a possible crash over the public address system of an American Airlines plane. She, too, was subdued by passengers and crew as the plane returned to the gate at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.
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