Quote Rainboe (#227)
It doesn't look good, but he obviously felt upset enough that he was not safe continuing the flight. There are two routes here- 1- he was emotionally unbalanced within himself, or 2- events occurred on the plane to make a reasonable person not safe to remain a pilot inflight. We are being frantically assured (1) applies by someone claiming to be onboard. It will be an ongoing investigation to assess how far provocation (2) could be implicated in his state of mind.
All of us can appreciate that occasionally things happen that are upsetting. The Captain asked for the crew decs before the time normally expected, ( he may have had good reasons) He got upset when the Purser apparently childishly stuffed the documents under the door instead of delivering them in a proper manner. It seems to a disinterested observer that neither of them behaved in a professional manner.
No doubt that UA will have (or even had) an enquiry into the happenings. They are under no obligation to publish their findings, we may never know officially what happened on the flight.
With regard to the state of mind of both individuals involved, I am reminded of an incident at Bristol a few years ago. The captain of a flight had a "vigorous exchange of views" with a member of the airside groundcrew just before the flight was due to depart. The Captain delayed the flight for a few minutes (about 10min as I recall) to "gather his thoughts". Perhaps this long thread and the sometimes mis-informed speculation, could have been avoided if both participants had spent a few minutes "gathering their thoughts" before the situation developed as it did. A word of apology from either of the parties could have defused the situation and allowed the flight to continue and the dispute to be settled after landing.