JetBlue flight diverted after captain's 'erratic' behavior
By the CNN Wire Staff
- Updated 2:37 AM EDT, Wed March 28, 2012
(CNN) -- A JetBlue flight
bound for Las Vegas made an emergency landing in Texas on Tuesday after the
captain acted strangely, was locked out of the cockpit by his co-pilot and was
wrestled to the ground by passengers, witnesses and authorities said.
The plane's co-pilot,
concerned by the "erratic"
behavior, locked the door behind the captain when he left the cockpit during
the flight, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
Passengers described to
CNN what happened next.
"The pilot ran to
the cockpit door, began banging on it and said something to the effect of,
'We've gotta pull the throttle back. We've gotta get this plane down,'"
said Laurie Dhue.
"At that point, the
two flight attendants tried to subdue him, and then seemingly out of nowhere,
about six or seven large guys stormed to the front of the plane and wrestled
the captain of the plane down to the ground and had him subdued in a matter of
moments. It was really like something out of a movie," she said.
Amateur video of the
incident showed a commotion as several men were moving in the aisle. A voice,
purportedly that of the pilot, can be heard.
"Oh my God. I'm so
distraught!" he shouts. The voice mentions Israel and Iraq.
In another video,
passengers appeared to be standing over something, or someone, presumably the
subdued pilot.
Paul Babakitis, another
passenger and a retired New York police officer, said he was one of the men who
helped wrestle the captain to the ground.
"I felt if he got
in the cockpit, he was going to try to take that plane down, and not for a safe
landing," he said.
Law enforcement met the
aircraft, cuffed the pilot and took him off the plane, Babakitis said. Video
showed someone being carried off the plane in a sort of chair.
"I'm not foreign to
situations like this, but I don't expect them at 30,000 feet," he said.
Babakitis and some other passengers reported hearing the
captain say the word "bomb" at one point. However, passenger Jason
Levin said he did not hear him say that.
Levin was sitting in the
front row of the plane, full of people on their way to a security conference,
when the pilot came out of the cockpit.
"It just seemed
like something triggered him to go off the wall. He would be calm one minute
and then just all of sudden turn," he said. "If it was going to
happen, it happened at the right time and the right place."
Passenger Tony Antolino
hailed the co-pilot as a hero.
"The co-pilot of
the flight, he really -- I think -- is the hero here because he had the sense
to recognize that something was going horribly wrong, and he was able to
persuade the pilot out of the cockpit," he told CNN's "Piers Morgan
Tonight."
Jet Blue Flight 191 left
New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport at 7:28 a.m.
"At roughly 10 a.m.
CT/11 a.m. ET, the pilot in command elected to divert to Amarillo, Texas, for a
medical situation involving the captain. Another captain, traveling off duty,
entered the flight deck prior to landing at Amarillo and took over the duties
of the ill crew member once on the ground," JetBlue said.
The crew member was
taken off the plane and transported to a medical facility, it added.
FBI Special Agent Lydia
Maese said the FBI responded to the incident and is coordinating with Amarillo
and airport police, the FAA and the Transportation Safety Administration. She
declined further comment, saying an investigation is pending.
Everything considered,
passenger Antolino said he felt thankful. "This could have had a horrific
outcome."
Reflections:
This article talks about
a crisis that occurred on a JetBlue flight that took off from New York and was
bound for Las Vegas on Tuesday, March 27th 2012. Midway through the flight, the
captain of the plane started behaving erratically which alarmed the co-pilot. The
co-pilot convinced the Captain to step out of the cockpit and then locked him
out of it. This upset the Captain even more and he allegedly started banging on
the cockpit door at which point a few passengers wrestled him to the ground and
subdued him. The plane had to make an emergency landing In Texas and an off
duty pilot that was on the plane was able to take over the Captain’s responsibility
and land the plane.
For
the people on the plane at the time, this was definitely a crisis. This is a risk
for JetBlue and would’ve been a crisis had someone been injured because of the Captain’s
erratic behaviour. This is an issue for the employees of JetBlue and their union
if they have one as they need to investigate whether this was caused by the
captain being overstressed or overworked. If this is the case, then this is also
an issue for JetBlue management which needs to be resolved before a situation like
this happens again in which the consequences could be much worse.
The co-pilot handled the
crisis situation very well. He recognized that the Captain was behaving
abnormally and convinced him to step out of the cockpit. If he had not done
this, the Captain could have taken control of the plane and crashed it if he
wasn’t in the right mind. The passengers and flight attendants also handled the
crisis well when they were able to subdue the captain after his outburst.
JetBlue has responded to this crisis intelligently as it has only given the
public the facts and has not speculated on the medical or mental issue that the
pilot had. They only said that the captain was ill and that they would not
comment further until they finished their investigation of the matter.
The airline industry need to monitor this
situation and the results of the investigation so that they can develop crisis
scenarios and conduct crisis simulations with staff involving something like
this happening on one of their flights.
Since there are videos available on YouTube and other
social media of the situation occurring, JetBlue should engage in crisis communication
with the pubic using this same forum so that they can “be where the action is”.
JetBlue also needs to
involve local regulators such as the FBI who responded to the incident and with
the Amarillo, Texas police, airport police, the FAA and the Transportation
Safety Administration in developing crisis management plans or handling
situations such as this. This being the aviation industry, they already have a
lot of crisis management tools in place so they would need to find out what
already exists and if all they need to do is investigate this particular
incident. It is possible that the co-pilot recognizing the Captain’s erratic
behaviour and getting him to leave the cockpit was part of an already developed
crisis scenario.
Personally, I am just thankful that
this crisis did not become a bigger crisis had the plane crashed because of the
erratic behaviour of the pilot. I will wait for the results of the investigation
before making comments or giving advice to those involved. I would just remind
JetBlue and the airline industry in general to follow their own crisis management
systems to prevent crises for happening such as limiting the hours of flight time
for pilots.
No comments:
Post a Comment