A JetBlue captain who reportedly had to be tackled by passengers Tuesday and forced an emergency landing when he began acting errectically lives in Richmond Hill, according to various media outlets.
The pilot, Clayton Frederick Osbon, of Belle Island, was taken to a hospital after the plane's co-pilot landed the plane in Texas.
The FBI was coordinating an investigation with authorities and the Transportation Safety Administration, said agency spokeswoman Lydia Maese in Dallas. She declined to comment on arrests. The plane was carrying 135 passengers and six crewmembers.
The Associated Press reported that passengers said the pilot seemed disoriented, jittery and constantly sipped water when he first marched through the cabin, then began to rant about threats linked to Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan after crew members tried to calm him down in the back.
"They're going to take us down. Say the Lord's prayer. Say the Lord's prayer," the captain screamed, according to one of the passengers, Tony Antolino.
Josh Redick, who was sitting near the middle of the plane, said the captain seemed "irate" and was "spouting off about Afghanistan and souls and al-Qaida."
Osbon's wife, Connye Osbon, could not be reached Tuesday night. She told ABC News that "There are several different sides to every story. Just keep that in mind," she said, adding, "I don't have a clue... I have no idea what's going on. I haven't spoken with him."
As the drama unfolded, Osbone was tackled by several passengers after he tried to re-enter the cockpit, which had been locked by the co-pilot, the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement.
Antolino, a security executive who said he sat in the 10th row, said he and three others pinned down the captain as he ran for the cockpit door and sat on him for about 20 minutes until the plane landed at Rick Husband Amarillo International Airport at 10 a.m.
"That's how we landed," he said. "There were four of us on top of him. ... Everybody else kind of took a seat and that's how we landed."
An off-duty airline captain who was a passenger on the flight entered the flight deck before landing in Amarillo and took over the duties of the ill captain, the airline said in a statement.
Osbon has been a pilot with JetBlue since
2000 and a pilot since he was a child, according to a story in the 2011 issue of Richmond Hill Reflections.
His Facebook page says Osbon has been a commercial pilot since 1989.