A group of passengers aboard a Malaysia Airlines flight departing from Melbourne, Australia is being praised as “heroic” after thwarting a man who rushed the cockpit and threatened to detonate a bomb.
“He has concerns for his safety in custody”, his lawyer told Magistrate Susie Cameron. He did not enter pleas. He did not have a bomb. The police, he explained, acted on reports that there could be more than one offender on board.
Australian police have defended their actions after a passenger tried to force his way into the cockpit on a Malaysia Airlines flight from Melbourne to Kuala Lumpur Thursday.
“He had been released from psychiatric care (on Wednesday), and from there we believe he had purchased a ticket on this plane… and then got out to the airport and on that plane”, Victoria state police chief Graham Ashton told reporters today. He was due to appear in Melbourne Magistrates Court later Thursday.
He did not enter pleas to the charges.
He refused to appear in court on the day of his arrest.
Photos posted online by those on board showed the man lying face-down in plastic cuffs, being restrained by passengers and staff.
He added: “Two or three fearless, young Aussies have taken him on and got him to the ground”.
Ashton described the device Marks carried on the plane as an “amplifier-type instrument”.
Leoncelli said he thought the device was a “boom box” music player.
Heavily armed police boarded the plane just before midnight local time (14:00 GMT) and placed the man under arrest. “He was agitated, is the best description – 100 percent, he was agitated”.
The crew gave them seatbelts to hog-tie him before the plane made an emergency landing at Melbourne airport.
Australian police said they checked that there was no bomb, and the incident is not being treated as terror related.
Police said the man was carrying a bluetooth speaker or something similar.
“An investigation led by Australian authorities is now underway and Malaysia Airlines wishes to extend its appreciation to everyone involved during the emergency situation”, the carrier said in a statement.
Malaysia Airlines has suffered two major disasters in recent years.
“Malaysia Airlines would like to stress that at no point was the aircraft “hijacked”.
Flight 370 had disappeared with 238 people aboard four months earlier. It is believed to have crashed in the southern Indian Ocean but has not been found.
“The airline’s cabin crew with the help of one passenger managed to restrain the passenger who was immediately handcuffed and subdued”, the airline said in a statement issued via Twitter.
