JetBlue CEO on pilot’s mid-air meltdown: ‘It started medical, but clearly wasn’t’

[Ty Webb]

A Judge can order that a person be held against their will for a medical evaluation, usually for 3 - 10 days. During that time, they can be in a hospital, mental health center, etc. The criteria is that they "present a danger to themselves or others".

Whatever the cause of happened with this guy, the idea to prosecute him is foolish, he was obviously out of his head, there was no motive.

 

[Mach 80]

Rumor is that he was on some sort of special diet for a few weeks with little eating of real food and that wife put him on it.

 

[Andy]

Rumor is that he was on some sort of special diet for a few weeks with little eating of real food and that wife put him on it.

From what I gather, he was into fitness/healthy lifestyle. He also sold ViSalus products (drinks, vitamins, etc - centered around shake mix meals) on the side. I don't think there's a link between what happened to him and the products. He had been on ViSalus products since 20 July 2011 (that information came from his ViSalus webpage).
He has a ViSalus distributor webpage but I'm not going to post a link to it because it contains his phone number and other personal information, including photos. There are also hints on his webpage that he is deeply religious - but I don't think that there are any connections between his religious beliefs and this incident.

For those who want more information/are curious about ViSalus products, here's a link: http://www.visalusshakes.com/

 

[SWA/FO]

I hope Ca Osbon gets the help he needs. Wondering the hoops we have to jump thru now to keep flying.

 

[DieselDragRacer]

JetBlue pilot's unraveling baffles friends

RICHMOND HILL, Ga. — 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.


Osbon, 49, was instead described as an affable aviator who took his private plane for joyrides in his spare time, shied from talking politics and hosted Super Bowl parties. His father was also a pilot who died in a 1995 plane crash while on a sunken treasure hunt, according to a Wisconsin newspaper in the town where his family lived.


"I can't say whether it's shock or disbelief," said Justin Ates, a corporate jet pilot and friend who also lives in Richmond Hill. "It's hard to describe what you feel when you see something that's completely 100 percent out of character."


Osbon is charged with interfering with a flight crew following his bizarre outburst Tuesday on the flight that began in New York and was diverted to Amarillo, Texas. He was still being held at a hospital there Wednesday and being medically evaluated.


Under federal law, a conviction for interference with a flight crew or attendants can bring up to 20 years in prison. The offense is defined as assaulting or intimidating the crew, interfering with its duties or diminishing its ability to operate the plane.


One aviation expert said he couldn't remember a pilot being prosecuted on the charge, which reads as though it was written with passengers in mind.
"I've been doing this for more than 50 years, and I can't recall anything like this," said Denny Kelly, a private investigator in Dallas and former Braniff Airlines pilot.


A pilot with JetBlue since 2000, Osbon acted oddly and became increasingly erratic on the flight, worrying his fellow crew members so much that they locked him out of cockpit after he abruptly left for the cabin, according to a federal affidavit. He then started yelling about Jesus, al-Qaida and a possible bomb on board, forcing passengers to tackle him and tie him up with seat belt extenders for about 20 minutes until the planed landed.


"The (first officer) became really worried when Osbon said 'we need to take a leap of faith,'" according to the sworn affidavit given by an FBI agent John Whitworth. "Osbon started trying to correlate completely unrelated numbers like different radio frequencies, and he talked about sins in Las Vegas."


Investigators said they were told that Osbon scolded air traffic controllers to quiet down, then turned off the radios altogether, and dimmed the monitors in the cockpit. He allegedly said aloud that "things just don't matter" and encouraged his co-pilot that they take a leap of faith.


"We're not going to Vegas," Osbon told his co-pilot in midflight, according to the affidavit.


Osbon, described by neighbors as tall and muscular, "aggressively" grabbed the hands of a flight attendant who confronted him and later dashed down the cabin while being chased. Passengers wrestled Osbon to the ground, and one female flight attendant's ribs were bruised during the struggle. No one on board was seriously hurt.


JetBlue spokeswoman Allison Steinberg said Osbon had been suspended pending a review of the flight. JetBlue CEO and President Dave Barger told NBC's "Today" show that Osbon is a "consummate professional" whom he has "personally known" for years. He said nothing in the captain's record indicates he would be a risk on a flight.


In Richmond Hill, a bedroom community on the Georgia coast just south of Savannah, next-door neighbor Bud Lawyer said he's having a hard time believing the man on the news is his good friend.


Osbon went to church but seldom talked about it and never seemed overly zealous, Lawyer said. And while the friends would occasionally chat about events in the Middle East, their talk never went beyond casual conversation about the events in the news, he said.


"He wouldn't intentionally hurt anyone," Lawyer said. "He's a kind-hearted, generous, loving teddy bear. It's totally out of character for this to happen to him."


Another longtime friend, Bill Curley, said Osbon is a Christian who has become "increasingly" religious but wasn't fanatical.


Osbon was also a direct marketer for health shakes sold by Visalus Sciences, a marketing company based in Troy, Mich. Ashley Guerra, a fellow Visalus marketer in Georgia, said she saw Osbon just last weekend and that he appeared friendly and helpful as usual.


In an interview last year with the local magazine Richmond Hill Reflections, Osbon said he first got in the cockpit when he was 6 or 7 and had ambitions of becoming a motivational speaker. His father and another man died after the engines in their plane failed over Daytona Beach while en route to look for treasure in Fort Lauderdale, according to 1995 story in the Washington Island Observer, a newspaper in the small Wisconsin community where Osbon's parents had a home.


Osbon's LinkedIn profile states that he received a degree in aeronautical physics from Hawthorne College and a physics degree from Carnegie Mellon University. However, Carnegie Mellon spokeswoman Teresa Thomas said Osbon attended the school for three years but never obtain his degree.


"On a Sunday morning he'd call me up and say, 'Let's go for a flight,'" neighbor Erich Thorp said. "Even with that little Piper Cub, before he would take it off the ground he would spend 15 minutes checking everything out. He had a whole list he would check. He was as careful a pilot as you could imagine."

 

[Turtle21]

What the man said was that it began as a medical issue and evolved into a security issue. I don't see any character assassination. That might be if he was saying that the captain was faking a medical condition. All the CEO said was there was an evolution to the incident, he also said the Capt was a great guy he had known personally for years.

I hope the Capt will be OK and gets all the help he needs. But for all the sue happy folks I hope he goes after JetBlue for defamation and loses, and then has to pay their legal bills. We've got to put an end to all this litigation for no reason just to get a payday.

Yeah, but any lawyer can twist the meaning of his words to get a good story going, just like the media does in politics everyday. A few well placed liars and then a heard of gullible people...

 

[RP170]

just like the media does in politics everyday. A few well placed liars and then a heard of gullible people...

Ahhhh yes....democrats.

 

[ackattacker]

Ahhhh yes....democrats.

WTF take your political thread drift elsewhere.

 

[Simon Says]

Report that JB Captain charged with a crime

The news is reporting that the JB Captain has been charged with the crime of interfering with a flight crews duties. If true, which I really don't believe it, how on earth can these charges be levied against the Captain.

As a Captain myself, I have interfered with a crew members duties by acting as PIC and using PIC authority. Under normal circumstances the Captain has the right to enter the flightdeck and at times interfere with other flight crews duties. Just off the top of my head I can think of several occasions where I did interfere. Simpliest one is telling the flight attendants not to do a service due to possible turbulance.

Anyways, this story brings me to tears when I see the pictures of the Captain hand cuffed and being wheeled down the airstairs. I feel for the guy. I wish him and his family all the best.

I also think that the FO did an incredably brave act of essentially commiting a mutany against the Captain.

 

[jonjuan]

The news is reporting that the JB Captain has been charged with the crime of interfering with a flight crews duties. If true, which I really don't believe it, how on earth can these charges be levied against the Captain.

As a Captain myself, I have interfered with a crew members duties by acting as PIC and using PIC authority. Under normal circumstances the Captain has the right to enter the flightdeck and at times interfere with other flight crews duties. Just off the top of my head I can think of several occasions where I did interfere. Simpliest one is telling the flight attendants not to do a service due to possible turbulance.

Anyways, this story brings me to tears when I see the pictures of the Captain hand cuffed and being wheeled down the airstairs. I feel for the guy. I wish him and his family all the best.

I also think that the FO did an incredably brave act of essentially commiting a mutany against the Captain.

Think about what may have happened if the FO instead was locked out of the cockpit and then ask yourself the same question.