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JFK pilot rants: ‘Say your prayers . . . We’re all going down!’

A veteran JetBlue pilot terrorized a flight from JFK to Las Vegas yesterday and had to be subdued by passengers who tied him up with their own belts as he ranted about al Qaeda and bombs.

“Say your prayers . . . We’re all going down!” wild-eyed Capt. Clayton Osbon screamed to frightened travelers, who couldn’t believe the man who had been flying their Airbus A320 had suddenly turned into a raving lunatic.

“It was so scary. People . . . were freaking out a little bit,” passenger Tiffany Lee told The Post.

“The girl next to me was saying, ‘Oh, my God, what if I never talk to my fiancé again?’ ”

The nightmare at 34,000 feet was so bad that the co-pilot actually locked Osbon — one of JetBlue’s respected “flight-standards captains” — out of the cockpit.

The 49-year-old aviator later shouted incoherently about the Middle East.

“He started screaming about al Qaeda and . . . a bomb on the plane and Iraq and Iran and about how we were all going down,” Gabriel Schonzeit told the Amarillo Globe-News after the jet made an emergency landing in that Texas city.

Former Fox-TV news anchor Laurie Dhue, a passenger, said people were shocked when he then attacked the cockpit.

“The captain came barreling down the aisle screaming incoherently and threw himself at the cockpit door,” she said. “‘You gotta let me in!’ he screamed, ‘Look in the camera, you can see that it’s me!’ ”

Some burly male passengers — including retired law-enforcement officers headed to a Las Vegas security-industry convention — wrestled Osbon to the floor and bound him with their belts.

After he was subdued, the first officer and an off-duty captain who happened to be aboard steered the jet south to Amarillo. It later made its way to Las Vegas.

No one was hurt except for the captain, who was strapped into a chair and taken away in an ambulance.

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At JetBlue headquarters in Queens, employees buzzed that Osbon had “lost it Steve Slater-style” — a reference to the flight attendant who blew open an emergency slide when he got angry with fliers at JFK in 2010.

There was little indication of the trouble to come as Flight 191 rolled back from the JFK gate just before 7:30 a.m.

Although the flight was about a half-hour behind schedule, and its seat-back TV screens were not working, Osbon spoke calmly to passengers over the public-address system, Lee said.

“He was normal. He introduced himself as the head pilot,” she said. “He apologized because the TV channels weren’t working. He was very cheerful, welcoming .”

The chaos began at around 10:50 a.m. New York time as the jet — 3 1/2 hours into its flight to Vegas — was headed southwest over Kansas and Oklahoma.

Osbon’s first officer — worried about his colleague’s rantings about bombs and other “weird s–t” — advised him to head to the lavatory to “cool off,” said a JetBlue insider.

When he came out, he yelled, “Iran and Iraq are going to bring us down. We all better start saying the Lord’s prayer,” according to passenger Tony Antolino, a 40-year-old Westchester resident and a security-company exec.

He walked to the back of the plane, and then to the front. By then, the off-duty pilot who was aboard had gone inside the cockpit and the co-pilot had changed the locking code.

When Osbon realized he couldn’t get back to the plane’s controls, he grew enraged. Suddenly, all hell broke loose aboard the jet, carrying 135 passengers and six crew.

“Flight attendants were trying to restrain him,” said Lee, who watched the frightening drama from the eighth row.

Dhue said a male and a female flight attendant tried to calm him, but the captain slammed into the female crew member.

Dhue said the attack on a woman prompted many of the male passengers to intervene in the scuffle.

“That was when good old, red-blooded Americans sprang into action,” she said.

As Osbon ran for an emergency exit, former New York City correction officer David Gonzalez reportedly grabbed him.

Gonzalez told Fox News he managed to choke Osbon as he shouted about Iran.

“I told him, ‘I’m gonna show you what Iran is like’ and I grabbed him and choked him,” said Gonzalez, who forced Osbon to the floor. “I was able to choke him with my forearm.”

Retired New York Police Officer Paul Babakitis told The Post last night that he helped organized the effort to keep Osbon under control.

“I didn’t know it was the captain of the plane. I just saw a deranged person,” said Babakitis. “I thought he was a terrorist . . . trying to get into the cockpit.”

Grainy YouTube footage taken from the middle of the passenger section showed a scrum toward the front of the jet.

Osbon was so strong, he broke a pair of plastic zip-tie handcuffs after Babakitis put them on him, the former cop said. He also broke through a second pair.

The passengers had to use their belts to bind Osbon, and some of them sat on him as the jet headed for an emergency landing.

“That’s how we landed,” said Antolino.

Osbon was taken to an Amarillo hospital. His condition was unavailable last night.

Osbon’s last FAA medical checkup was in December 2009. His only flight restriction is that he must wear eyeglasses.

The FBI, Transportation Security Administration and the Federal Aviation Administration are investigating the incident.

Osbon, who is married and lives near Savannah, Ga., was profiled last year in Richmond Hill Reflections, a local magazine.

He told the publication that he began flying when he was 6 years old, using his father’s plane.

He wanted to fly F-14s in the Navy and become an astronaut, but was rejected by the military because of his eyesight. He studied aviation at colleges in Pennsylvania and New Hampshire.

Osbon said he had flown 35 different types of airplanes in his career, which he thought had reached the elite level when he became a Gulfstream IV pilot in the 1990s.

He signed up with JetBlue in 2000.

Osbon told the magazine that he was a “flight-standards captain,” a title that designated him as one of JetBlue’s most experienced and respected captains.

Those who know him were shocked at yesterday’s turn of events.

“I don’t have a clue . . . I have no idea what’s going on,” his wife, Connye Osbon, told ABCNews.com. “There are several different sides to every story. Just keep that in mind.”

Bonnie Serra, 84, who has rented a South Ozone Park crash pad to Osbon for the past 11 years, said he is “like a son to me.”

“He’s a great big kid, always playing ball with my nephews,” Serra said.

One of those nephews, Justin Capace, 27, who lives next door on 150th Avenue, said “the last two Christmases he spent with us. He was a huge Packers fan but he rooted for the Giants when he was around.”

And Osbon’s neighbors in Richmond Hill, Ga., said they couldn’t believe their easygoing friend had lost his cool so dramatically.

“He’s one of those guys who you just love being around,” said Elton Stafford, who said of Osbon and his wife, “They are the life of the party. They are very outgoing, gregarious folks, very fun-loving people.”

Last night, Slater, JetBlue’s most infamous flight attendant, told The Post that if he had been on board, he would have been ready to deal with the crazed captain.

“We handle the pilot just as if it was any other person,” he said. “And if there is a threat in the cockpit, that threat has to be removed.”

Additional reporting by Lewis Levin, Joe Mollica, Christina Carrega, Jennifer Bain and Don Kaplan

Clayton F. Osbon

Clayton F. Osbon (
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CABIN PRESSURE: Anxious passengers look on as their pilot is subdued by retired law-enforcement officers in mid-flight after he apparently went stark-raving mad. (
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