Man stabs flight crew in hijack bid

A MAN stabbed two flight attendants with sharp wooden stakes yesterday as he tried to break into the locked cockpit on a domestic Australian flight, apparently in a bid to hijack and crash it.

Cabin crew and fellow passengers overwhelmed and disarmed the man, who had been shouting threats “to cause damage and grief”.

“We believe he was trying to take over the plane,” police spokesman Stephen Cato said.

No motive had been established, he added.

Transportation Minister John Anderson described the man as “less than stable” and said the attack did not appear linked to terrorism.

The plane returned to its departure city of Melbourne, where it landed safely and the Qantas attendants were hospitalised with stab wounds.

“Although it looks premeditated, it doesn’t look like it was an act of terrorism,” Mr Anderson told a hastily arranged news conference.

However, Mr Anderson also said the man “seemed to be intent upon trying to force a nasty outcome, and if you call an attempt to, as I understand it, to crash an aircraft, you might call that a hijacking, but he was not able to do so.” The Qantas flight had departed for the southern island of Tasmania when the man emerged from the seventh row and tried to pass the crew on his way to the cockpit, Qantas chief executive Geoff Dixon said.

“He never got to the cockpit,” Mr Dixon said, adding that the doors were locked during the flight.

Two passengers were also injured as they and the crew overwhelmed the man.

The attacker was in custody and being interviewed by police, said Jane O'Brien, spokeswoman for the Australian Federal Police. He was not identified.

Mr Anderson said the wooden weapons had gone through security checks unnoticed, calling the oversight a “lesson about unforeseen tools being used”. Qantas chief executive Mr Dixon described the weapons as two small wooden stakes, which he said were about 6 inches long.

The man shouted threats as he attempted to storm the cockpit, “nasty sort of threats to cause damage and grief”, Mr Anderson said.

“We’ll leave no stone unturned, plainly we don’t want to see a repeat of this,” Mr Anderson added.

The plane turned around and landed at Melbourne airport not long after it had departed, where police and emergency services rushed to the scene.

Police met passengers in the departure lounge at Melbourne’s airport for further questioning.

The flight attendants, a man in his late 30s and a woman in her 20s, were taken to a nearby hospital.