Passengers overpower hijacker on Turkish Airlines flight

16 Oct, 2008

An apparently drunken man who tried to hijack a Turkish Airlines flight to Russia on Wednesday by claiming to have a bomb was overpowered by passengers and detained on landing, officials and media reports said.
The would-be hijacker on the charter flight from the Mediterranean city of Antalya to Saint Petersburg was quickly subdued and the Airbus A-320 continued its flight after the incident, said Orhan Birdal, the head of Turkey's airports management authority.

The man was taken into police custody after the plane landed as scheduled at Saint Petersburg at 1120 GMT, Russia's Interfax news agency reported. "The hooligan landed with everyone else. He has been taken off the plane and handed over to police," an unnamed official from Saint Petersburg's Pulkovo Airport was quoted by Interfax as saying. A tearful passenger from the flight was contacted on the phone by AFP while undergoing checks at Saint Petersburg's Pulkovo airport.

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