A jetBlue pilot flipped out Tuesday on a flight from New York to Las Vegas, running up and down the aisle raving about terrorists and bombs after his frightened co-pilot locked him out of the cockpit.



Capt. Clayton Osbon's midair breakdown happened to take place on a flight packed with burly New Yorkers traveling to an international security conference — several of whom tackled Osbon and sat on him until the plane made an emergency landing in Texas an hour later.



"They're going to take us down, they're going to take us down. Say the Lord's Prayer, say the Lord's Prayer," the captain hollered, according to Anthony Antolino, 40, from Rye, Westchester County, one of the four men who leapt to restrain the captain when he made a move toward the emergency exit.



An off-duty jetBlue pilot who happened to be on the flight helped land the plane, the airline said.



Osbon, 49, a Wisconsin native who lives in Savannah, Ga., is a Flight Standards Pilot for jetBlue. His wife of seven years, Connye, a massage therapist, could not be reached but was distraught in a brief interview with ABC.



"I have no idea what's going on. I haven't spoken with him," she said. "There are several different sides to every story. Just keep that in mind."



Christine Lucas, a magazine writer who profiled Osbon last year, called him a quintessential pilot: confident, outgoing and seemingly happy.



"Obviously, I'm not qualified to make statements about his mental health, but he's not remotely the kind of guy you would expect this to happen to," she said.



According to witness accounts, Osbon had some sort of breakdown inside the cockpit about two hours into Flight 191, which had taken off at 7:28 a.m. from JFK Airport with 135 passengers and five crew members.



The co-pilot coaxed him out of the cockpit, then locked him out and wouldn't let him back in.



The crazed captain banged on the door, then started running up and down the aisles screaming about bombs, passengers said.



One passenger quoted the pilot saying, "Iraq, Al Qaeda, terrorism, we're all going down."



Then a flight attendant got on the public address system and screamed, "Restrain him!"



Retired NYPD Sgt. Paul Babakitis, 51, Antolino and two other men leapt into action as the 6 foot-4, 250-pound pilot began banging on the cockpit door.



"As we were restraining him, pulling him away from the cockpit door, he was saying 'We got Iraq, we got Afghanistan, they're going to take us down too,' " Antolino heard Osbon say.



Babakitis, who spent 22 years on the force, said that his NYPD training kicked in.



"We each grabbed a different part of his body and we just threw him to the ground," he said.



The hulking pilot struggled with the men, screaming, "I'm distraught. I'm distraught," Antolino said.



A flight attendant handed the men disposable handcuffs, but the furious pilot broke the ties.



Babakitis, who was sitting in aisle seat 7C, said that despite Osbon's jetBlue uniform, he assumed the crazed pilot was intent on downing the plane.



"I viewed him as a terrorist," said Babakitis, who runs PGB Executive Investigations in Jericho, L.I. "I did't view him as pilot, but a person who wanted to do harm to the plane and everyone on it."



Babakitis, Antolino and some of the other men heading to the 2012 International Security Conference in Las Vegas restrained the squirming, cursing pilot until the emergency landing in Texas an hour later.



"He picked the wrong plane. Huge guys just tackled him," one passenger said.



Antolino, an executive at Eyelock Corp., said the biggest hero was the co-pilot who locked out Osbon.



"He was in a state of mental crisis. He was foaming at the mouth, erratic — it got progressively worse. In his mental state, it could have been a tragedy today," he said.



At the airport in Amarillo, the flight was met by police, and Osbon was taken to a hospital with an undisclosed medical condition, jetBlue said.



A passenger's photo showed him being wheeled onto the tarmac on a dolly, his hands tied behind his back.



The shaken passengers boarded a new plane to Vegas a few hours later, jetBlue said.



According to a 2011 magazine profile of Osbon, he spent his life flying and has flown 35 different types of aircraft. He did a stint piloting luxury jets around the world and lived in Portugal and France.



He tried to fly for the Navy but didn't make the cut because of an astigmatism in his right eye.



"That broke my heart a little bit," he told Lucas, who wrote him up for last year's Richmond Hill Reflections "Guys in the Sky Issue."



Osbon has been flying for jetBlue since the airline launched in 2000 and has a sideline selling weight-loss products, including a "shake mix that tastes like a cake mix."



He told Lucas he'd like to start a new career as a motivational speaker.



"I'd like to think the world is more than just getting up in the morning, making a cup of coffee, going to work, coming home, kissing your wife good-night and going to bed," he said.



A grandfather, devout Christian and conservative Republican, his Facebook page lists two activities: "Working Hard" and "Praising God."



A neighbor in Georgia who declined to be named called Osbon "perfectly normal."



"One of his hobbies is kayaking. He's very laid back guy as far as I can tell," he said. "He's helpful if you ask him for something. I don't think he has ever had any problems with anyone here."



Two years ago, jetBlue flight attendant Steven Slater made global headlines when he quit dramatically by cursing out an aircraft full of passengers, grabbing two beers and exiting the plane by deploying the emergency slide.



With Sarah Armaghan



hkennedy@nydailynews.com