Who gave this man a license to fly?

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Relative: JetBlue co-pilot doesn't think he's hero - WSJ.com

SALEM, Ohio — The co-pilot who landed a flight while passengers held down the captain doesn't see himself as a hero, his mother-in-law said Thursday.

JetBlue Airways co-pilot Jason Dowd, whose home is in eastern Ohio, was in the cockpit on Flight 191 from New York to Las Vegas on Tuesday when federal prosecutors say Capt. Clayton Osbon began acting strangely.

Osbon rambled to Dowd about religion and was later wrestled under control by passengers in the cabin and restrained while Dowd made an emergency landing in Texas.

"I'm glad for those people he was the co-pilot that day," Dowd's mother-in-law, Ruth Ann Kostal, said. "Thank God, he was there."

She was not surprised Dowd acted cool under pressure.

"He's a great guy," Kostal said. "He doesn't want to be known as a hero."

Dowd, who still lives in his hometown of Salem with his wife and their two young children, hasn't been able to come home yet because he's still being interviewed by federal authorities in New York, Kostal said Thursday evening.

Osbon's behavior became increasingly erratic on the flight, worrying his fellow crew members so much that they locked him out of the cockpit after he abruptly left for the cabin, a federal affidavit says.

He allegedly encouraged Dowd that they "take a leap of faith," according to an FBI agent. "We're not going to Vegas," Osbon allegedly told his co-pilot in midflight.

Witnesses said Osbon told his co-pilot "things just don't matter" and sprinted down the center aisle, yelling jumbled remarks about Sept. 11 and Iran. Osbon has been charged with interfering with a flight crew.

Dowd's father-in-law, William Kostal, said he learned of his son-in-law's involvement in a call from his daughter. "He called very shortly after it happened and had a very short conversation that he was just OK and that there had been a problem on the plane," Kostal said.

"He's a great guy. I think he's probably one of the best son-in-laws I could have," Kostal said outside his home in Salem.

Others who know Dowd around the small town that sits south of Youngstown near the Pennsylvania state line said they could see him doing something heroic.

"I'd certainly trust him," said Kathy Hendricks, a real estate agent who knows the family. "I'd want to be on a plane that he was the pilot."

Patty Eaton, a secretary at the church Dowd's family attends, said she's known him since he was a teenager.

"He's a wonderful person," she said. "I can see him being a hero. It does not surprise me one bit that he acted so professionally."

Dowd's neighbor, Brad Devine, said he also wasn't surprised by Dowd's behavior.

"I think to be a pilot in general you have to have that nerve," Devine said.
Pretty scary shit.
 
I want to know WTF happened to the pilot and why he all of a sudden freaked the fuck out.
 
either drugs of mental 3 mile island
i think i heard he was a vet, maybe from the 90's iraq deal?
sometimes your mind just implodes

or... he was part of a sleeper cell of the CIA, his mind was programmed to commit another rist attack to boost ratings for the upcoming election, except when they called him and played the sound through the phone, he had verizon service and part of it got cut off leaving him in wires crossed during transmission mode, aka jelly brain :ph34r:
 
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