JetBlue is able to say categorically today that its former pilot Captain Clayton F. Obson was not a criminal assaulting passengers as widely suggested. He was just insane. Obson, 49, was found not guilty by reason of insanity due to a “severe mental disease or defect.” Osbon was earlier deemed mentally competent to stand trial.
Osbon was charged with interfering with a flight crew and will now return to a federal mental health facility in Fort Worth for further treatment. The federal judge will determine if he is to be committed to a mental facility.
Osbon was indicted after a March 27 incident on a flight from Las Vegas to New York when he had to be wrestled to the ground by passengers after yelling about Jesus and Al Qaeda. He had been speaking in a bizarre fashion to his co-pilot. Co-pilot Jason Dowd diverted the flight to Rick Husband Amarillo International Airport after Osbon became incoherent.
Source: Savannah as first seen on Reddit
Poor guy. If he was a bricklayer you’d never hear about it. But in a seriously responsible position like that? I have actually had nightmares where I was an Air Traffic Controller and I couldn’t handle the load and I woke up sweating. But, hey.. that’s MY phobia.
As my grandfather used to say when talking about crazy people, “there are more of them walking around than there are locked up.”
I figured he was insane when I noticed how he spells ‘Olson.’
It would seem to me Jet Blue might have put itself into legal jeopardy by admitting Captain Obsen was suffering from mental illness if the captain later claimed part of the reason for his condition was caused by his employment and any unfavorable treatment by the airline. I don’t know if this is the case but seems to be a risky move on their part in my opinion.
Well, on a train, an el, the subway, riding or on the platform, driving your car, heck even walking doiwn the street you always have to keep your fingers crossed that this will not be the moment when someone ‘breaks’ physically or mentally. When I think about it (thankfully not very often, only when it is brought up – like now) I am amazed more that this happens as few times as it does (or maybe its just that we don’t hear about it(?) )
And I echo Idealist HAPPY 4TH!
bananna 1, July 4, 2012 at 11:14 am
In my pilot training, I am learning you have to be a little insane to be pilot in command.
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Lots of responsibility in the job. So more training and/or more ego and/or more insanity. : )
Let’s hope he has a full recovery.
http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/5864
Excerpt:
Pentagon and industry insiders have revealed to WMR that the “unknown” problem with the F-22 is the result of a fuel additive that has long been used by the U.S. and other military forces around the world to extend the life of aircraft components over the life cycle of not only the F-22, but other military aircraft and even armored vehicles, such as the Bradley Fighting Vehicle.
The fuel additive in question is triorthocresyl phosphate or TCP. Lower concentrations of the synthetic organo-phosphate are found in the commercial fuel additive STP but the military, in an effort to increase and extend the performance of aircraft and vehicle components, uses higher, and more toxic, concentrations of the additive. When the TCP neuro-toxin is released into an aircraft’s oxygen system, pilot incapacitation, partial or full paralysis, hypoxia, and disorientation can occur.
Experts suspect the Pentagon has been covering up the TCP problem for decades. In 1977, an Air National Guard navigator became incapacitated on board a C-130 Hercules. The cause was determined to be air contamination from jet engine synthetic lubricating oil.
TCP is also used in commercial aircraft and commercial pilots have blamed the additive. An article in the February 25, 2006, London Observer cites complaints from the British Airline Pilots’ Association (Balpa) that TCP has caused British pilots, including a pilot flying a FlyBe airliner from Belfast to Gatwick, suffered double vision, headaches, nausea, loss of concentration, and disorientation during the flight, symptoms also cited by pilots of the F-22 and other military aircraft.
TCP can also result in neurological psychotic behavior by pilots and may have been a factor in the March mental breakdown of JetBlue pilot Clayton Osbon, who, while flying at 35,000 feet, stormed out of the cockpit of his New York to Las Vegas aircraft and screamed to startled passengers that there was a bomb on the plane and they were going to crash. Osbon has been criminally charged in the incident. In 1996, a Maersk airlines co-pilot forced his Britain-to-Italy bound aircraft to make an emergency landing after he broke into a sweat and began complaining that he was afraid of heights.
In my pilot training, I am learning you have to be a little insane to be pilot in command.
It seems that this is the best solution for this unfortunate matter……Maybe, just maybe more money can be diverted to mental health….
And I, thinking that JT’s was observing the fourth because it was so quiet. So I wrote this for youze…..
idealist707
1, July 4, 2012 at 7:31 am
How quiet it is. No new blawgs. No comments. Weird.
Don’t tell’em man, that dood had forgot this is the Cinderella hour. The USA Independence Day.
When blawging is forbidden, commenting is forbidden, and only a limited number of activities in thís universal expressioon of patriotism.
I was thinking of making a scurrilous list of such activities: example—making up spontaneous gangs to attack McD to place orders for 5000 Big Mac’s (the fire department will respond to that emergency—–since the police is dealing with the girl scout gangs doing the same at Burger King’s.)
So to the others I say, keep manning your barbecues, don’t let the small ones drink “lighter” fluid, especially if they want to spit it on the fire.
And keep’em loaded. You never know when a terrorist, or some “crimnul” might attack your csstle.
I’m trying to rmemember something appropriate to end with a real tribute—but the image of George saying “Mission accomplished” on the carrier deck keeps interfering.
Some epiphanic moment to reflect on in thanksgiving?
Not a one. Guess my birth will have to do, but that’s kinda hazy now.
So anyway, Happy Fourth! That’s bigger than a fifth!