A brave father-of-three stepped in and restrained a passenger who stripped down to her underwear and twice tried to storm a plane cockpit shouting “Allahu Akbar” on his flight to Manchester Airport.
Phillip O’Brien, 35, was flying on a Jet2 flight, returning from Cyprus to Manchester last week with six members of his family, including his wife and three children aged eight to 14, when a female passenger, mid 30s, walked up the aisle dressed only in underwear.
This happened just after take-off and she tried to gain entry to the cockpit on two occasions.
The boss of a drainage firm, who also worked in security previously, restrained the woman when staff onboard were unable to, and assisted the crew members secure her into a chair on the flight as it was diverted to Paris, after she claimed there were explosives on board. She allegedly asked the children she was with if they were
Speaking with the Mirror, the Macclesfield man said: “Everything was normal and then shortly after take-off a woman walked up the aisle naked and banged on the cockpit door shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’. As you can imagine everyone was sh**ing themselves.
“I spoke to staff and said, ‘Why have you not put her to the floor?’. They said, ‘We’re not able to’. I said, ‘Well I am’. So when the woman went to the cockpit again I took control, took her to the ground and at that point the pilot did an emergency landing to Paris.”
According to Mr O’Brien, the woman said her parents were members of terrorist group Isis before she was led away when the pilot diverted the plane to Paris. He said he asked the woman why she was saying such things and she replied: “If I didn’t there’s going to be an explosion and everybody is going to die”.
