JetBlue Pilot in Rant Called ‘Consummate Professional’

A JetBlue Airways Corp. (JBLU) captain locked out of the cockpit by his co-pilot after acting erratically on a flight is a “consummate professional” with no history of trouble, Chief Executive Officer Dave Barger said.

Clayton Osbon has flown for JetBlue for 12 years, a spokeswoman, Jenny Dervin, said today. Dervin said Osbon has been charged with “interfering with crew-member instructions” and remains in a medical facility in Amarillo, Texas, where the plane landed, in Federal Bureau of Investigation custody.

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Passengers on a JetBlue flight. Photographer: Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images

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March 28 (Bloomberg) -- Bloomberg's Scarlet Fu, Stephanie Ruhle and Adam Johnson report that a JetBlue Airways Corp. captain had to be subdued by passengers after he began acting erratically during a flight from New York and was locked out of the cockpit by his co-pilot before the plane was diverted to Texas. They speak on Bloomberg Television's "Inside Track." (Source: Bloomberg)

Flight 191 was en route yesterday to Las Vegas from New York when the pilot began behaving erratically, the Federal Aviation Administration said. The co-pilot locked out Osbon after he briefly left the flight deck, and passengers wrestled the captain to the floor after he started shouting and banging on the cockpit door.

“I’ve known the captain personally for a long period of time and there’s been no indication of this in the past,” Barger said on NBC’s Today show. New York-based JetBlue isn’t aware of any similar incidents in the pilot’s past, he said.

The airline declined to release further personal details on Osbon or on the co-pilot who diverted the plane to Amarillo, assisted by an off-duty pilot who was on board.

A call today to the FBI office in Dallas investigating the case wasn’t immediately returned.

To contact the reporter on this story: Mary Schlangenstein in