Bomb scare on Malaysia Airlines jet
Plane returned to Australia after passenger tried entering the cockpit with electronic gear and threatened to blow up the aircraft
CANBERRA // A Malaysia Airlines plane returned to Australia after a passenger threatened to detonate a bomb and tried to enter the cockpit. The Sri Lankan man, Manodh Marks, 25, was tackled and tied up by passengers, police said yesterday.
Mr Marks had been discharged from a Melbourne psychiatric hospital on Wednesday before buying a ticket on the late-night flight to the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur, Victoria police chief commissioner Graham Ashton said.
Police said the man had no terrorist links or associates.
About 10 minutes after Flight 128 took off from Melbourne, Mr Marks walked from his economy seat to the cockpit door clutching an electronic device and threatening to blow up the aircraft. Passengers subdued him and tied him up with belts.
“At that point, he was essentially trussed up,” Mr Ashton said.
Mr Marks, who was in Australia on a student visa while studying to be a chef, appeared in Melbourne magistrates court yesterday, charged with endangering the safety of an aircraft and making false threats.
He could face a 10-year prison sentence on each charge.
His lawyer, Tess Dunsford, told the magistrate that Mr Marks suffered from a psychiatric illness and would not apply for bail.
The lawyer did not enter a plea to the charges. The matter has been listed for a committal hearing on August 24.
Scott Lodge said he was one of the four passengers who pounced on Mr Marks.
“All of a sudden, someone had him in a chokehold and got his arm behind his back and the other guy eventually choked him and he passed out,” Mr Lodge said.
Mr Ashton called the device Mr Marks carried on to the plane an “amplifier-type instrument”.
Andrew Leoncelli, a former Australian Football League midfielder for Melbourne Demons, was one of the four and said the device was a boombox music player.
“He was saying: ‘I’m going to blow the plane up, I’m going to blow the plane up’,” Mr Leoncelli said. “He was agitated, is the best description – 100 per cent, he was agitated.”
The Airbus A330-300 carrying 337 passengers returned to the airport about 30 minutes after take-off.
Passengers were kept on the plane for 90 minutes after landing and the plane was searched for potential bombs at a remote part of the airport, Mr Ashton said. Police wearing body armour took Mr Marks off the plane.
Malaysia’s state-owned airline has suffered two recent high-profile disasters.
Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down over Ukraine in 2014 with the loss of all 283 passengers and 15 crew.
Flight 370 disappeared with 238 people aboard four months before that. It is believed to have crashed in the southern Indian Ocean but has not been found.
Victoria state premier Daniel Andrews offered government support for stranded passengers.
“I don’t think any of us have a true understanding of the trauma, just how frightening this experience would have been,” Mr Andrews said. The state premier warned against governments responding to the drama by banning mentally ill passengers from flying.
“We want to be very careful not to be driving people away from getting the care they need,” he said. “We don’t want to be stigmatising any more than mental illness is already stigmatised.”