CherokeeDriver: The most unfortunate thing here is that the Captain became ill whilst operating an aircraft. If he had his medical episode on the ground (in pre-flight or whereever) it would be much, much less of an issue. I only want to make these comments;
1. I hope he gets the medical help and support he needs
2. Well done to the FO/PF for realising there was a danger to the aircraft and dealing with it professionally.
3. I work in a high stress environment (a trading floor in an investment bank). I've seen people break down VERY rapidly and VERY completely. I've also been lucky enough to work with them again, many months later, when they have had their medical condition stablisied and the underlying factors of the break down (root cause) corrected.
There but for the grace of god go I. Some posters in this thread need a very long hard look at their attitude to a fellow human.
The reason that you don't understand the attitude of some posters on this forum is because you're not a professional pilot, as the name of the forum states. An airliner cockpit at 35,000 feet isn't a financial trading floor. While the consequences of a breakdown on the trading floor can be fatal financially, the consequences of a breakdown inflight can be fatal for hundreds of humans. Even doctors only kill one at a time - not hundreds. Professional airline pilots, especially captains, hold themselves and their peers to a standard unknown by those who have never shouldered such responsibility. At my company, which has an up or out policy, there have literally been suicides during captain upgrades. And even after making it through, some elect to bid back to F/O rather than accept the pressure that comes from sitting there at night over an ocean with hundreds onboard; thinking of all the possible things that can go catastrophically wrong, knowing that for many of them there is no procedure in the book, realizing that legally and morally you're the final authority for what will be done to deal with anything that happens, accepting that you will be held ultimately responsible for any outcome, and having the self-confidence to believe that no matter what happens you'll manage to get it right - not horribly wrong. At the end of every flying day as I lay in bed, I would replay in my mind every single thing that happened in the pit that day (on the ground and in the air), analyze anything that wasn't done absolutely perfectly, and decide how I would do it better the next time. I consider myself extremely lucky to have never had any incidents during my career, because in the back of your mind you always know that some things can happen that are simply beyond any human being's ability to cope. Even having been retired for a few years now, I can clearly remember every single thing that I really screwed up in my career and despite the fact that I was able to successfully manage them, I still consider them personal failures on my part. That's the hard look at the attitude toward the fellow humans in the back of the jet that's required.