A US airplane made an emergency landing in Texas Tuesday after passengers restrained the pilot when he began shouting about al Qaeda and bomb threats, officials and media reports said. The JetBlue flight from New York to Las Vegas, Nevada was diverted to Amarillo, Texas after the incident, which the airliner said was due to a medical issue involving the captain.
The captain went to a restroom just outside the cockpit, and when he emerged began shouting "Iraq, al Qaida, terrorism, we're all going down!" according to the Amarillo Globe-News newspaper. "It was a little scary, he was pretty freaked out," passenger Heidi Karg told CNN. "When they were trying to calm him down .. they had to restrain him and a bunch of male passengers ran to the front of the plane to subdue him."