More background on the ill captain from a newspaper article:
The CEO/president of JetBlue says the crazed captain captured by Las Vegas-bound passengers after a mid-air meltdown was a old friend and “consummate professional.”
Airline executive Dave Barger said Capt. Clayton Osbon’s history offered no hints of any potential problems — and certainly nothing like his bizarre rant about terrorists and bombs.
“Obviously, the captain’s now in the hands of medical care, obviously under the custody of the FBI,” Barger said Wednesday morning on the “Today” show.
“I’ve know the captain personally for a long period of time, and there's been no indication of this at all in the past,” Barger said. “Consummate professional.”
...According to a 2011 magazine profile of Osbon, he spent his life flying and has flown 35 different types of aircraft. He did a stint piloting luxury jets around the world and lived in Portugal and France.
He tried to fly for the Navy but didn’t make the cut because of an astigmatism in his right eye.
“That broke my heart a little bit,” he told Lucas, who wrote him up for last year’s Richmond Hill Reflections “Guys in the Sky Issue.”
Osbon has been flying for jetBlue since the airline launched in 2000 and has a sideline selling weight-loss products, including a “shake mix that tastes like a cake mix.”
He told Lucas he’d like to start a new career as a motivational speaker.
“I’d like to think the world is more than just getting up in the morning, making a cup of coffee, going to work, coming home, kissing your wife good-night and going to bed,” he said.
A grandfather, devout Christian and conservative Republican, his Facebook page lists two activities: “Working Hard” and “Praising God.”
A neighbor in Georgia who declined to be named called Osbon “perfectly normal.”
“One of his hobbies is kayaking. He’s very laid back guy as far as I can tell,” he said. “He’s helpful if you ask him for something. I don’t think he has ever had any problems with anyone here.”
Hero JetBlue passenger didn
More on his Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/clayton.osbon
Was he carrying a gun, or has that programme been terminated?
Don't know if he was packing but some of the folks in the FFDO program worry me as they wax poetic about their collection of guns and huge stocks of ammo and how they will use them if Obama tries to take away their automatic weapons. FFDO's are supposedly screened for psych issues but a few of them appear to me to be on the lunatic fringe even for pilots.
