Victoria police confirmed they were investigating the incident, saying it was alleged that the passenger had threatened the safety of passengers and crew.
“The man did not gain entry to the cockpit. The man was subdued and a safety plan was enacted,” they said.
Police said passengers were speaking to investigators, adding: “There appears to be no imminent threat to passengers, staff or public and the investigation is ongoing.”
The former AFL player Andrew Leoncelli was on the plane, seated in business class, when he saw a man carrying a large black cylindrical object run towards the cockpit. Leoncelli said the man had started to run up and down the aisle before he was wrestled to the ground by cabin crew who took away the object from him.
“There’s a giant black object on this plane, a crazy guy wants to blow it up, who was subdued,” the former footballer said in a video made while on the plane, seen by the Age.
Leoncelli told the ABC: “I ran to the front and confronted him around the corner and he was there and he was a tall guy, taller than me with a beanie on, wearing dark clothing, dark skin, carrying a giant thing, a very strange-looking thing with antennas coming off it, saying, ‘I’m going to blow the plane up … Staff grabbed the object, which we’re not sure what it was, he was claiming to blow the plane up with, and walked it back to the front of the plane.”
Leoncelli told radio station 3AW: “The staff were saying, ‘Sit back down, sir; sit back down, sir.’ He goes ‘No, I’m not going to sit back down, I’m going to blow the plane up.’
“The staff screamed out, ‘I need some help, I need some help.’ So I jumped up, undid my buckle, and approached him.”
Leoncelli said the man had run to the back of the plane, where two other men grabbed and disarmed him of a “giant black thing” and “put hog ties on him”.
Fairfax reported that in air traffic control audio posted online, a male voice can be heard saying: “We have a passenger trying to enter the cockpit.”
About three minutes later the same male voice can be heard saying the passenger was “claiming to have an explosive device, tried to enter the cockpit, has been overpowered by passengers”.
“However we’d like to land and have the device checked,” the voice said.
Malaysia Airlines confirmed the diversion occurred “after the operating captain was alerted by a cabin crew of a passenger attempting to enter the cockpit”.
It added: “Malaysia Airlines would like to stress that at no point was the aircraft hijacked.”
Pictures and video posted online by passengers show heavily armed personnel boarding the plane after its return to Melbourne. One video appears to show a man, who had been lying handcuffed on the floor of the plane, being removed.
A 25-year-old man from Dandenong was taken into custody.
Flights were temporarily diverted from Melbourne airport to Avalon, near Geelong. Flights have now resumed, though traffic around the area is heavily congested.
According to a report in Malaysia’s the Star, the deputy transport minister, Datuk Seri Ab Aziz Kaprawi, said the disruptive passenger, thought to be a Sri Lankan national, was drunk. The minister said the man was holding a “powerbank”, or phone charger.
A Victoria police superintendent, Tony Langdon, told ABC TV: “We do not believe this is terrorist-related at the moment. We are obviously concerned for the passengers and crew. It would have been a very traumatic experience for them. We are now debriefing those people and looking after their welfare.”
More about: #MalaysiaAirlines
