The captain of a JetBlue aircraft shouted about a bomb and had to be locked out of the cockpit and restrained as the Las Vegas-bound flight was diverted to Texas, according to passengers.
The airline said that the captain of Flight 191 from New York had a “medical situation” and that the pilot in command of the aircraft elected to land in Amarillo.
JetBlue said the ill captain was taken to a medical facility.
Passengers said a man in a JetBlue uniform walked from the cockpit to the back of the aircarft but started to become disruptive when he was barred from getting back inside.
“Once he got back to the front of the plane I heard him scream, ‘Let me in,'” one said.
Heidi Karg, a passenger on the flight, told CNN she thought the man was the captain of the flight but that she wasn’t certain.
“We heard the word ‘bomb,'” she said. “We didn’t know exactly what was going on.”
An off-duty captain who happened to be a passenger on the flight went to the flight deck and took over the duties of the ill captain “once on the ground”, the airline said in a statement.