Jetblue A320 near Amarillo, captain incapacitated by panic attack

[emshighway]

A Jetblue Airbus A320-200, registration N796JB performing flight B6-191 from New York JFK,NY to Las Vegas,NV (USA), was enroute at FL340 about 55nm north of Amarillo,TX (USA) when the captain suffered a panic attack and behaved entirely incoherent forcing the first officer to seek assistance by cabin crew and passengers to overpower the captain, lock him out of the cockpit and have him restrained in the passenger cabin. Another Jetblue pilot flying as passenger assisted the first officer while diverting to Amarillo for a safe landing about 20 minutes later.

http://www.avherald.com/h?article=44d15583&opt=0

http://flightaware.com/live/flight/J...055Z/KJFK/KLAS

Anyone have the LiveATC feed?

[megatop412]

Wow. Second time this month a flightcrew has flipped out. Yes I understand that "they are people too", but, can you imagine what could have happened had he gotten back in that cockpit? Those people have no idea how close they came

[Matt Molnar]

Here he is talking to Amarillo Approach and Tower. The main drama probably took place on Albuquerque Center, which, unfortunately, LiveATC doesn't offer.

[Fighting_falcon_51]

On some of the news footage you could AH-1 Cobras in the background. Were they scrambled to intercept or were they completely unrelated?

[Cary]

Some more details: http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2012/im....pdf?hpt=hp_c2

Wow.

[megatop412]

So based on details of this complaint, I certainly don't think people acted "too quickly to use force" to take this guy down as suggested by some on a particular aviation-themed site. They were right to do so, exactly when they did.

Could you imagine sitting there, reading your magazine, when the pilot of all people strides up and asks if you have a 'problem'? Scary stuff.