JetBlue Pilot's Dad Died in Plane Crash

We may never know exactly what made JetBlue pilot Clayton Osbon come unhinged, but the New York Daily News has uncovered tragedy in his past. The pilot's father, who Osbon began flying with as a teenager, died in a plane crash in 1995. The elder Osbon and a friend were en route to the Bahamas from Wisconsin when their twin-engine plane lost power near Daytona Beach in Florida. Both men were killed when the plane crashed in a wooded area.

Fortunately for everybody in the JetBlue meltdown, Osbon—who has been charged with interfering with a flight—was locked out of the cockpit and restrained by passengers. But deranged airline pilots are believed to have intentionally caused at least three crashes since 1982, BusinessWeek finds. A Japan Airlines pilot crashed his plane in 1982, killing 24 people; a SilkAir flight in Indonesia crashed in 1997, killing 104 people in what investigators decided was an intentional crash; and 217 people were killed in 1999 when an EgyptAir co-pilot shut off the plane's engines and sent the plane diving into the Atlantic Ocean off Massachusetts. (More Clayton Osbon stories.)