JetBlue’s ‘hero’ hails from Valley

Staff/wire reports

SALEM

The JetBlue Airways first officer who regained control of a flight to Las Vegas after the pilot suffered a breakdown is from the Mahoning Valley.

The New York Post reported Thursday that the JetBlue first officer is Jason Dowd of Salem. The Vindicator contacted Dowd’s parents, Lewis and Jean B. Dowd, at their Salem home Thursday morning.

A woman who answered the phone said she was Jason’s mother, and said that she and her husband knew of Jason’s role in the Tuesday flight. She said he was in New York City being interviewed by federal authorities, but they “really haven’t heard anything since.

“That’s all I can say right now. It has shocked everybody in the family,” she said.

The Vindicator also left a message at the listed phone number for Jason Dowd in Salem but did not hear back. Jason and Lewis Dowd also are listed as the owners of Dowd’s Stump Removal. The business address and phone number match that of Lewis Dowd’s home.

Friends and relatives of the co-pilot of JetBlue Airways Flight 191 say he doesn’t want to be considered a hero — but that’s exactly what many are calling him.

Pilots train for a range of in-flight mishaps including sick passengers, emergency landings and terrorist attacks. But Dowd faced the rarest of scenarios: deciding whether to lock his incapacitated captain out of the cockpit and make an emergency landing after Clayton Osbon became unruly.

Dowd is staying out of the public eye for now, but a wave of overnight fame likely awaits. JetBlue says the decision on whether to go public is up to him.

His mother-in-law, Ruth Ann Kostal, said Thursday that Dowd doesn’t consider himself a hero, but she’s not surprised that he acted cool under pressure.

“I’m glad for those people he was the co-pilot that day,” Kostal, said. “Thank God, he was there.”

Patty Eaton, a secretary at the church that Dowd’s family attends, said she’s known him since he was a teenager.

“He’s a wonderful person,” she said. “I can see him being a hero. It does not surprise me one bit that he acted so professionally.”

Federal prosecutors have charged Osbon after his unraveling on the flight from New York to Las Vegas, describing in court records a midair breakdown they say began with cockpit ramblings about religion and ended with passengers wrestling him to the cabin floor.

A pilot with JetBlue since 2000, Osbon acted oddly and became increasingly erratic on the flight, worrying his fellow crew members — including Dowd — so much that they locked him out of the cockpit after he abruptly left for the cabin, according to a federal affidavit. He then started yelling about Jesus, al-Qaida and a possible bomb on board, causing passengers to tackle him and tie him up with seat belt extenders for about 20 minutes until the plane landed.

“The (first officer) became really worried when Osbon said ‘we need to take a leap of faith,’” according to the sworn affidavit given by an FBI agent John Whitworth. “Osbon started trying to correlate completely unrelated numbers like different radio frequencies, and he talked about sins in Las Vegas.”

The flight left New York around 7 a.m. and was in the air for 3 Ω hours before landing in Texas. The passengers boarded another plane for Las Vegas several hours later. That plane arrived in Las Vegas about two hours later.