(Newswire.net — December 7, 2015) — Serbian media reported that during the Lufthansa 1406 Frankfurt-Belgrade flight a passenger caused an incident, trying to enter the cockpit and threatened to open the door of the plane. A Jordanian national with the US passport was banging on the cockpit door and shouting:” I’ll open the door of the plane”! It was all happening somewhere over Austria, on 11000 metres.
It was very fortunate that the crew and some of the other passengers on the plane were totally composed and reasonable and managed to subdue the Jordanian. He was taken to business class, away from the crew and was watched closely until the plane grounded safely in Belgrade on time, at 12.45 at the Nikola Tesla airport.
Right upon the landing, Serbian police entered the plane, seized the Jordanian, took him to Belgrade and put him in custody where the Serbian public prosecutor ordered a 48 hours’ detention, which is a common pre-trial procedure. The Jordanian is under investigation and is accused of endangerment of public safety.
Unofficially, the incident was not reported by the crew during the flight. According to Milan Djukic, the president of the handball club Vojvodina, this passenger aroused suspicion from the very beginning of the flight. He seemed disoriented, troubled, he was constantly changing seats and at one point even sat beside Djukic. The other players said he seemed irrational to them, too.
Djukic said the man looked unstable and somewhere in the middle of the flight reached for the cockpit door and tried to open it. Luckily, he was prevented from doing so by the crew, an assistant coach and one of the players, Alexey Rastvorcev. In his interview to Tanjug (Serbian press agency), Mr Djukiic said that it was not so dramatic up there because it was clear that it was not an attempted terrorist act, but only an incident commited by a disturbed person. They took the men who was already calm to the business class, away from the cockpit and the crew, where the handball players watched him until the end of the flight.
The other passangers on the plane were quite unaware of what was happening and found out about the incident after the plane landed. They were surprised, of course, but happy that they had not had to witness the incident and that everything went well.
The Lufthansa spokesman Andreas Bartels stated that the safety of the flight was not compromised and that LH 1406 grounded safely and according to the flight schedule.
Kurir (Serbian daily tabloid) reported that the Jordanian said he had been beside himself and that he wanted to go to Allah and take everybody else with him. Fortunately, that did not happen. No official statement from the Belgrade police department has yet been issued, but the Jordanian national is still in detention, waiting for the trial.
Handball players were on their way back from Porto where they had played the game in Championship League and were admitted by the President of the Republic of Serbia, Tomislav Nikolic, who congratulated them on their courage and readiness to resolve the crisis on time.
Sources / Local news portals: