Most passengers on board an Air Seychelles flight from India’s commercial capital Bombay to the Maldives only realised they had escaped a mid-air drama when the plane landed safely.
Passenger Sathya Rao, a hotel employee in the Maldives, said the first many people heard about the knife-wielding passenger who tried to hijack the flight on Monday was after he had been overpowered.
Rao thought he heard loud voices shortly before the aircraft arrived at the Maldivian international airport on Hululle island, but did not take much notice until the pilot made a shock announcement.
”The captain announced that there was a small incident aboard the aircraft. He said a passenger tried to get to the flight deck after assaulting crew members.
”The captain said fellow passengers and the rest of the crew overpowered the man and the situation was under control,” Rao told AFP, by telephone.
Maldivian officials said one crew member was slightly injured while trying to subdue the would-be hijacker, who was carrying an Indian passport.
Rao said only five or six passengers were getting off in the Maldives from the flight which took off at 2.50 a.m. (2120 GMT Sunday) from Bombay to fly to the Seychelles via the capital of the Indian Ocean nation of the Maldives, a popular resort destination made up of more than 1 000 tiny coral islands.
”Most of the passengers did not know what had happened until the captain broke the news. By the time we realised that we escaped a hijacking, the plane landed and a lot of security people were there to receive us,” he said.
He said the luggage of all the passengers was minutely checked as the would-be hijacker said he had planted a bomb onboard the Boeing 737 aircraft. An airline source in Bombay said there were 64 passengers on board.
Maldivian civil aviation officials said they had thoroughly searched the aircraft and found no explosives.
The would-be hijacker was arrested while another was being held for questioning, officials said.
The Maldivian Transport Ministry said the hijacker had tried to divert the aircraft to an unknown destination.
The incident came just two days before the anniversary of the September 11 hijackings in the United States, and Air Seychelles has called for an investigation into security at Bombay airport. – Sapa-AFP