HANGAR MANAGEMENT: Pilot Clayton Osbon, who was taken off a JetBlue plane after scaring the crew and passengers, wears camouflage with flower-print upholstery in his man cave, which houses a single-engine plan (
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Before he terrorized 135 passengers, crazed JetBlue captain Clayton Osbon made a chilling rant to his co-pilot — giving a religious sermon before turning off the radios and saying, “We need to take a leap of faith,” authorities said yesterday.
“Things just don’t matter,” Osbon told First Officer Jason Dowd during Tuesday’s JFK-Las Vegas flight, a federal investigator said yesterday.
The pilot was charged with interfering with a flight crew — and faces up to 20 years if convicted.
During his meltdown at 34,000 feet, Osbon also screamed at air traffic controllers to be quiet — and then he turned off the cockpit radios, said an FBI affidavit filed in federal court in Amarillo, Texas, where the flight made its emergency landing Tuesday.
Osbon — who was late for a pre-flight briefing at JFK — “started trying to correlate completely unrelated numbers like different radio frequencies, and he talked about sins in Las Vegas,” said the affidavit.
“We’re not going to Vegas,” Osbon said, according to the affidavit. He then launched into what Dowd called a “sermon.”
Three-and-a-half hours into the cross-country flight, Dowd suggested to Osbon that they invite to the cockpit an off-duty JetBlue captain who was a passenger.
“Instead, Osbon abruptly left the cockpit to go to the forward lavatory,” the affidavit says.
“When the flight attendants met with him at the front galley to find out if anything was wrong, Osbon aggressively grabbed a flight attendant’s hands,” the affidavit said.
“Osbon banged on the lavatory door and told a female passenger who was inside that he needed to go to the bathroom.”
While Osbon was in the lavatory, a flight attendant — at Dowd’s request — sneaked the off-duty captain to the cockpit.
After leaving the lavatory, Osbon walked to the back of the passenger cabin, and then he “sprinted” back to the cockpit and “banged on the door hard enough that the FO [Dowd] thought he was coming through.”
Dowd then issued an order over the PA system to restrain Osbon, which several passengers did.
“Pray f–king now for Jesus Christ,” Osbon yelled to the passengers, according to the affidavit. He also began rambling about “September 11th, Iraq, Iran and terrorists.”
“Guys, push it to full throttle,” he yelled, inexplicably.
Amazingly, Osbon passed a psychiatric exam last year and a medical checkup in December, the FAA said yesterday.
Osbon’s friends in Queens said they had no idea he was religious. “If he was religious, he wasn’t fanatic about it. We never spoke about it at all,” said Thomas Consiglio, a neighbor and grandson of Osbon’s longtime landlord.
Additional reporting by Joe Mollica