after they say he started yelling about a bomb and al-qaeda and telling them to say their prayers. the plane, forced to make an emergency landing in texas, instead of neag from new york to vegas. once on the ground the security personnel met the plane and you can see the pilot, taken to a medical facility. joining us is rob mark, editor of jet line.com and commercial pilot and bob babekidis, a passenger who help restrain the pilot and also a former nypd sergeant. paul, let me start with you. it s a very good thing you were on that flight and you are one of the men we re seeing in this video taking down the pilot, restraining him. just take us there. you re sitting on a flight, going from new york to vegas. what s your first sign of trouble on the flight? well, i have to tell you, it was a truly perilous situation where i initially observed a male white, approximately 6-foot three, 6-foot four, about 250 pounds physically fit,
where instinctively, three other passengers also converged in that area. between the four of us, i made a quick assessment and decided that after grabbing this guy, who was totally physically fit, i mean megyn: you had to be somewhat terrified, paul, no? even with your police experience? it was a very scary situation, but in cases like this, this is where training and experience kick in. and again, cooperation with the other passengers, that we all had a great relationship where we were able to work in sync to get this person down on the ground, in a safe and effective and controlled manner, and to essentially hold him down on the ground for approximately 15 minutes until law enforcement personnel had boarded the flight and took custody, control of him. megyn: rob, you tell me, do they do mental health screenings either upon hiring and or thereafter for the pilots in the sky? well, they do.
i mean, every airline that hires a commercial pilot does do a screening. while i couldn t give you the name of it right offhand, i mean, they are performed. but they re not performed on the annual physical that a pilot has to take every year there s really never been a need before to do anything like that. megyn: i mean, this copilot, it was the first officer who subdued, or who locked the captain, who was having trouble, out of the cockpit. but it didn t happen, paul, until three hours into the flight rob, this is actually for you. what does that tell you about what the first officer must have been going through? well, i know one question i did have for the media folks at jetblue, which i haven t back from them yet was how long this crew had been flying together because normally a captain and first officer are pared together for a month usually a month at a time. so if this was a new pairing and perhaps this was their first or second flight, it would be a little different than i
for weeks and maybe the first officer had been feeling really uncomfortable with this person. but either way, i mean, for the first officer to take this kind of action is absolutely unprecedented. i ve never heard of a case like this before. but the first officer really took a risk for his job to do this, because if he had been wrong, i mean, it would have probably cost him his job. megyn: it could be a career ending decision. it could have an life or death decision that he made for you,o but for you paul and the people on your flight and i know you believe the copilot deserves a lot of credit. clearly he made a command decision. he needs to be greatly commended, as well as the jetblue personnel on that flight. they all tried to pitch in and do their very best to calm the situation and keep things in a calm and controlled fashion. megyn: how long were you holding the pilot in the aisle until the flight hand ed? landed? he was being contained on
congress should figure out what changes would be necessary. but two key provisions may be doomed if the mandate is tossed. that is, preventing insurers from denying coverage and charging higher preem uls because of medical history. the court seemed to think those would go away if the mandate is stricken. liberal justices, sotomayor, beginningsberg, engaged in arguments which could be a sign they re anticipating the mandate will be invalidated by the entire court. now, sotomayor asked what s wrong with leaving this in the hands of those who should be fixing it, meaning congress. gingsberg observed there are many things that have nothing to do with affordable health care, why make congress redo those. the government s attorney noted that parts of the law are already in effect, including coverage of adult children on their parent s polices to which scalia shot out, quote, it s going to bankrupt the insurance companies. well, perhaps it was chief justice john roberts who best des