Pilot

A Jet Blue pilot who began ranting and acting erratically as his flight headed from New York to Las Vegas -- forcing the co-pilot to lock him out of the cockpit and make an emergency landing -- has been described as a seemingly content family man who once hoped to be an astronaut. Jet Blue identified the pilot as Clayton Osbon, who lives in Georgia but who maintains an apartment in the New York City borough of Queens because his flying base is New York. In a statement Tuesday night , it said that the captain of Flight 191 was receiving medical treatment.

One pilot died after two small planes collided Monday afternoon over Ventura County, sending one plummeting into a mountainside and forcing the other to land on a golf course. Both planes were Cessna single-engine aircraft. At least one had departed from Santa Monica Airport before crashing about 2 p.m. in the Santa Monica Mountains, according to preliminary information from the Federal Aviation Administration. The other, which had three people on board, belly landed at the Westlake Golf Course.

A JetBlue pilot who rambled incoherently and had to be restrained by passengers during a flight in March was scheduled to be released from federal custody Friday and will not be allowed back on commercial flights. On March 27, Clayton Osbon, 49, suffered from a temporary “severe mental disease or defect” on a New York to Las Vegas flight where he shouted obscenities, talked about religion and screamed about 9/11, Iraq, Iran, and terrorists, according to his criminal complaint.

An Air Force pilot who was hospitalized after his jet crashed at Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida is in good condition and has been released, military officials said Friday. At about 3:30 p.m. Thursday the pilot was returning from a routine training mission in an F-22 Raptor -- considered the most advanced fighter jet in the world -- when he alerted people on the ground of an emergency and then ejected, base officials said. The $143-million jet, designed by Lockheed Martin Corp., slammed into a grassy field about a quarter-mile east of a drone runway.

A Navy pilot committed suicide after apparently killing three other people in a Coronado apartment during a night of New Year's Eve celebrating, according to information released Wednesday by San Diego County authorities. John Robert Reeves, 25, an F/A-18 Hornet pilot in training at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in San Diego, killed himself with a gunshot to the head, according to the San Diego County Sheriff's Department and medical examiner. The other three people killed — Navy pilot David Reis, 25; his sister, Karen, 24; and Matthew Christopher Saturley, 31, of Chula Vista — are listed as homicide victims.

HOUSTON -- Ten passengers filed a lawsuit in New York on Wednesday against JetBlue Airways in connection with the incident in which a pilot had to be restrained after running through the cabin yelling during a New York-to-Las Vegas flight in March. The lawsuit, filed in state Supreme Court in Queens, claims the airline was "grossly negligent" in allowing Capt. Clayton Osbon to fly, the Associated Press reported after obtaining a copy of the lawsuit. Court clerks could not immediately locate or release the lawsuit Wednesday.

U.S. Coast Guard  and Navy forces have been dispatched to the scene of a plane crash off the coast of Florida. So far there is no word about the fate of the pilot believed to have become incapacitated at the controls. The small aircraft circled aimlessly in the skies for hours over the Gulf of Mexico as anxious air traffic controllers watched helplessly. Air traffic controllers apparently tried for hours to make contact with the pilot, but all attempts failed, pointing to the likelihood that the pilot had perhaps fallen unconscious at the controls, or perhaps suffered a heart attack.  FlightAware.com released the above image of the path of the plane, including the erratic and repetitive circular patterns it made over the Gulf of Mexico.

One person was killed Friday evening when a small plane crashed into a residential neighborhood in West Los Angeles, fire officials said. The pilot of the single-engine Cessna 210 was returning to Santa Monica Airport and declared an emergency shortly before crashing about 6 p.m., said Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Ian Gregor. The plane came down near the intersection of Westwood and Olympic boulevards. It did not hit any buildings despite crashing in a community dense with homes.

The 55-year-old man found dead in Burbank along a 5 Freeway off-ramp Tuesday evening was a longtime Alaska Airlines pilot scheduled to fly back to Seattle that morning, the airline said Wednesday. A passerby spotted the body along a fence at the Scott Road off-ramp about 6 p.m. Tuesday and called authorities, Burbank Police Sgt. Darin Ryburn said. Paramedics arrived and pronounced the man dead. He was identified as Lee Clifford Morris of Richland, Wash., a Seattle-based pilot who worked for Horizon and Alaska Airlines for 26 years, said Paul McElroy, an Alaska Airlines spokesman.

In the world of airplane racing, Jimmy Leeward was as big as they came. His story was legendary: Born to parents who made a life flying and selling airplanes, Leeward "was literally raised on the airports his father operated," according to a profile on his family's website. A business in real estate development paid the bills, but there was never a question to anyone who knew him that Leeward's heart rested in racing planes. He owned a team of racers, barreled through the skies in more than 120 competitions, and worked as a stunt pilot in several films.