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Jet Blue pilot loses it on plane
I would probably have had a heart attack, or at the very least a severe panic attack.. I simply would not have been okay. Just reading this made me anxious.
(CNN) -- A JetBlue flight bound for Las Vegas made an emergency landing in Texas on Tuesday after the captain acted strangely, was locked out of the cockpit by his co-pilot and was wrestled to the ground by passengers, witnesses and authorities said.
The plane's co-pilot, concerned by the "erratic" behavior, locked the door behind the captain when he left the cockpit during the flight, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
Passengers described to CNN what happened next.
"The pilot ran to the cockpit door, began banging on it and said something to the effect of, 'We've gotta pull the throttle back. We've gotta get this plane down,'" said Laurie Dhue.
"At that point, the two flight attendants tried to subdue him, and then seemingly out of nowhere, about six or seven large guys stormed to the front of the plane and wrestled the captain of the plane down to the ground and had him subdued in a matter of moments. It was really like something out of a movie," she said.
Amateur video of the incident showed a commotion as several men were moving in the aisle. A voice, purportedly that of the pilot, can be heard.
"Oh my God. I'm so distraught!" he shouts. The voice mentions Israel and Iraq.
In another video, passengers appeared to be standing over something, or someone, presumably the subdued pilot.
Paul Babakitis, another passenger and a retired New York police officer, said he was one of the men who helped wrestle the captain to the ground.
"I felt if he got in the cockpit, he was going to try to take that plane down, and not for a safe landing," he said.
Law enforcement met the aircraft, cuffed the pilot and took him off the plane, Babakitis said. Video showed someone being carried off the plane in a sort of chair.
"I'm not foreign to situations like this, but I don't expect them at 30,000 feet," he said.
Babakitis and some other passengers reported hearing the captain say the word "bomb" at one point. However, passenger Jason Levin said he did not hear him say that.
Levin was sitting in the front row of the plane, full of people on their way to a security conference, when the pilot came out of the cockpit.
"It just seemed like something triggered him to go off the wall. He would be calm one minute and then just all of sudden turn," he said. "If it was going to happen, it happened at the right time and the right place."
Passenger Tony Antolino hailed the co-pilot as a hero.
"The co-pilot of the flight, he really -- I think -- is the hero here because he had the sense to recognize that something was going horribly wrong, and he was able to persuade the pilot out of the cockpit," he told CNN's "Piers Morgan Tonight."
Jet Blue Flight 191 left New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport at 7:28 a.m.
"At roughly 10 a.m. CT/11 a.m. ET, the pilot in command elected to divert to Amarillo, Texas, for a medical situation involving the captain. Another captain, traveling off duty, entered the flight deck prior to landing at Amarillo and took over the duties of the ill crew member once on the ground," JetBlue said.
The crew member was taken off the plane and transported to a medical facility, it added.
FBI Special Agent Lydia Maese said the FBI responded to the incident and is coordinating with Amarillo and airport police, the FAA and the Transportation Safety Administration. She declined further comment, saying an investigation is pending.
Everything considered, passenger Antolino said he felt thankful. "This could have had a horrific outcome."
Re: Jet Blue pilot loses it on plane
So another passenger/not working captain was just let into the cockpit? That's werid to me, too.
Can a co-pilot land a plane by himself?
If I'm ever on a plane where this stuff happens I would have a heart attack from fright.
DH's aunt was on that plane, on her way to a mahjong tournament in Vegas with her old lady friends lol. She said it all happened so fast that she really didn't have time to panic, but it all sounds so crazy that I bet I would have panicked.
I hope that whenever I fly, there is always a security convention at my destination so these guys can be on my flights.
<a href="http://www.thenest.com/?utm_source=ticker&utm_medium=HTML&utm_campaign=tickers" title="Home DI don't think it's too weird. Pilots travel back to their homes all the time after they're off duty. He'd have a badge, etc. to prove that he was a pilot with that airline. There's a good possibility that the co-pilot knew him.
This is a good example of post 9/11 thinking. People aren't going to sit idly by on planes anymore if something goes down.
If you're asking if the co-pilot is capable of landing the plane by himself, the answer is yes. Heck, the plane is capable of landing itself without any help from humans (auto-pilot is some seriously impressive technology)! If you're asking if he is allowed to land the plane by himself, that answer would be yes too - especially if the captain has been incapacitated in some way. I agree with you that letting the other man - the passenger pilot - into the cockpit was strange. I wonder why that was necessary and what duties he had to do that the co-pilot was apparently incapable of.
Oh, he probably did have a badge, duh. I'm thinking some dude in a Hawaiian shirt and bermudas like "hey, I'm a pilot." No?
a passenger jet can land itself? So if the pilots go down w/ food poisoning (for instance) autopilot lands the plane no Ted Striker needed?
Really?
i think that copilot is a badass. people hem and haw and blah blah over coworkers acting weird, and he just locked that mofo out.
and thank goodness there were some retired police and aggressive strong people on that plane to take him down.
i would have about 10k panic attacks. and i'm not even remotely a nervous flier.
Well, the technology is a little more complicated than my reply makes it sound. The simple answer is, "yes, autopilot can land a plane without aid from the actual pilots." But this act does require that there be technology to support it on the ground at the airfield the plane is landing at. It's called ILS: instrument landing system. But if both the plane and the airfield has ILS, then it basically talks back and forth with the plane and adjusts speed, pitch, yaw, etc. to make sure the plane is coming in at the correct speed and rate of descent. There are also different categories of ILS. Some categories require the pilot takes over once a certain altitude (e.g. 200 ft. or 100 ft.) has been reached. Others are capable of gliding the plane right onto the landing strip without aid from the pilot.
He was probably another pilot on that airline, and as soon as it went down, either the crew asked him or he volunteered. I've often seen crew chatting to off-duty pilots, in a normal seat or in the jump seat. I doubt the airline or FFA are 100% happy with only having one pilot, and if another one is there why shouldn't they be in the cockpit in case #1 has a heart attack or something.
NFW! That is crazy!
This is maybe the only time I'd be happy at the end of the flight that I was in coach. I doubt the people at the very back of the plane even knew it had happened until it was all over. The people up in first class had a front row seat to all the action. I would have been freaking out.
That makes sense. I wasn't thinking of it along those lines. But I guess in my head, the whole point of having two pilots on every flight to begin with is for this very purpose - in case one of them becomes unable to fulfill his/her duties. So while I suppose it isn't as strange as I originally thought to have the other pilot enter the cockpit, I still wonder what he had to do that the co-pilot couldn't - it mentions that this extra pilot completed the captain's duties on the ground. I mean, surely they train for scenarios that require the co-pilot to finish the flight solo, yes? I would assume that sort of training would also mean the co-pilot learns how to take over the captain's duties on the ground too in such scenarios. Or at least, I would hope they'd train for things like that since they obviously happen sometimes.
I'm assuming the co-pilot probably could have done the on-the-ground wrap-up, but appreciated having the extra help. Particularly after a kind of stressful day...
I can attest to this as we were once sitting in the exit row and I let Cville know if there was an emergency I would freeze and she would be the one opening that door.
Then of course a few weeks later Sully landed in the Hudson.......
What I find interesting is that one pilot locks the other - who is saying the plane is in danger and needs to land NOW - out of the cockpit, and everyone jumps the second pilot.
I guess the situation was much clearer in person, but how did they know that it wasn't a terrorist flying the plane, and the co-pilot warning them about that?
Heck, if I were a passenger, I might be freaked out about how many people instantly jumped up to shut up the co-pilot - like they were plants, security for the plot, you know?
Actually, based on the YouTube video uploaded, DH's aunt was pretty close to the action. She called her daughters from Amarillo before it hit the news just to let them know that the plane was diverted there, but let the news media tell them exactly why they were diverted because she knew she'd never get off the phone with them if she told them exactly what happened lol. She was calm and was just pissed off thinking she'd miss the mahjong tournament, which she was so excited to talk about when I hung out with her a few days ago at a family event.
It is so weird that the captain didn't exhibit any weird behavior leading up to the flight. I also read he was doing some weird maneuvers with the plane, which would have made me shiit my pants but I wonder if the passengers could actually feel them.
<a href="http://www.thenest.com/?utm_source=ticker&utm_medium=HTML&utm_campaign=tickers" title="Home DI would guess, in part, because the flight crew were trying to talk him down and he wasn't cooperating. If the crew had been trying to get into the cockpit, etc. then that would have been a different story.
I didn't even think about that, yikes. But maybe the flight attendants let passengers know the co-pilot was in the cockpit and at the controls?
<a href="http://www.thenest.com/?utm_source=ticker&utm_medium=HTML&utm_campaign=tickers" title="Home DMy guess is that the pilot passenger was deadheading or commuting and so they would have already known he was on board (and it wasn't just a random guy saying "hey I'm a pilot too").
But holy crap! I wonder what was wrong with him.
Seriously! He picked the right flight to lose it on (for the other passengers, that is).
Yeah, I recall almost always seeing a uniformed pilot sitting in the cabin. I'm no longer afraid to fly, but It does makes me feel better to see a pilot sitting among the rest of us in case there is an emergency.
<a href="http://www.thenest.com/?utm_source=ticker&utm_medium=HTML&utm_campaign=tickers" title="Home DI have a little panic attack whenever I am on a plane. I can't imagine what my body would do if this was going down on one of my flights. Probably just give up and die!
What a crazy story.
How lucky that he flipped his sh!t on the flight carrying folks for a security convention. I doubt the nerds heading to a Star Trek convention would've been nearly as useful. I'm pretty sure TSA makes you check your Bat'leth.
LOL
I thought it might be too obscure! And old!
HAHAHAHAH! Well the joke's on me, because I didn't get it. I totally had to google it after major wife said she loved you.
Me too.
Ladies and gentleman, this is your stewardess speaking. We regret any inconvenience the sudden cabin movement might have caused. This is due to periodic air pockets we encountered. There's no reason to be alarmed and we hope you enjoy the rest of your flight. By the way, is there anyone on board who knows how to fly a plane?