Big Rab will set aboot ye
Hero Scot follows in tradition of Glasgow airport bombing by tackling maniac who threatened to blow up his plane in mid-air ..
A HEROIC Scots tourist has told how he tackled an attacker threatening to blow up a packed passenger jet.
Rob Macdonald, 60, showed amazing courage – and followed in the footsteps of the Glasgow Airport terror attack heroes – when the maniac tried to storm the cockpit with an object he said was a bomb.
He and other passengers sprang into action
after the man grabbed a screaming stewardess.
Married dad-of-two Rob, who was flying home after visiting family in Australia, said: “I just heard her yelling for help. I pinned the guy down. I held him with the other guys. “I’m no hero. I’d do it again.” The man who spread terror on the Malaysia Airlines jet turned out to be a disturbed psychiatric patient who had just left a clinic. The “bomb” he was carrying was a Bluetooth speaker.
But Rob and the other heroes had no way of knowing that when they made the instant decision to take him on.
Fellow-Brit Scott Lodge, who also tackled the man, said: “He was fumbling around and got a device out of his bag,
“Once he’s stood up and started heading towards the cockpit the blood just disappeared out of my body.
“I knew where this was going. The sheer shock and dread I felt was massive. No one is going to sit there.
“I don’t remember doing it. It was just natural instinct. It was really weird.
“In that one second, there were four of us out of our seats and we pounced on him. He just didn’t expect it at all.
“It was pandemonium. We pulled his arm away from his body because we thought he had a device in his hand.
“All of a sudden, someone has him in a chokehold and his arm behind his back. The guy choked him and he passed out.”
Rob, who is from Saltcoats in Ayrshire but now lives in Milton Keynes, added:
“His eyes were glazed. When we held him down, they were just staring and glazed.”
Rob and Scott enjoyed a pint together after the plane landed safely.
Their courage brought back memories of 2007, when Glaswegians ran to take on terrorists trying to carry out a massacre at Glasgow Airport.
Baggage handler John Smeaton, one of the civilians later awarded the Queen’s Gallantry Medal, said at the time: “Glasgow doesnae accept this. If you come tae Glasgow, we’ll set aboot ye.”
Flight MH128, an Airbus A330-300 with 337 people on board, took off from Melbourne in Australia for Kuala Lumpur at 11.11pm local time on Wednesday.
It had only been in the air for minutes when the man launched his attack. The lights in the cabin were off.
Business class passenger Andrew Leoncelli saw the man run past him towards the cockpit.
He said: “He was saying, ‘I’m going to blow the f ****** plane up. He was agitated, 100 per cent.”
Andrew said the man was making gestures as if pushing a button. He added: “I went back to tell the other passengers there was a real threat here, we need to do something. I can’t tell you their names, but they’re good fellas.”
The incident left many passengers terrified. Some reportedly texted loved ones to tell them they were going to die.
The man was tied up with seatbelts and put on the floor and the plane returned to Melbourne. But Rob said it took more than an hour for heavily armed police to board and carry him off.
“We spent an hour and 10 minutes with a potential bomber and bomb on board,” he said. “What was the delay?”
Police later said they had to make sure there were no more suspects, or any explosives, on the plane.
The attacker was identified as Manodh Marks, a 25-year-old from Sri Lanka who was in Australia on a student visa and training as a chef. He was released from a psychiatric unit in Melbourne hours before the jet took off.
He appeared in court yesterday charged with recklessly threatening to set off a bomb and destroy an aircraft, and was remanded in custody.
His lawyer told magistrates her client had a “psychiatric illness”.
The passengers were put up in hotels. Malaysia Airlines said: “We wish to extend our appreciation to everyone involved during the emergency situation.”
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 vanished over the Indian Ocean in 2014 with 239 people on board. It has never been found.
Four months later, 298 people were killed when another of the airline’s jets was destroyed by a missile over war-torn eastern Ukraine.
Investigators blamed Russian-backed rebels. The Kremlin denied it.
And the thing is, we don’t really mind. We wait patiently in queues, take off anything the security staff say and shuffle, shoeless, through the full-body metal detector.
We do these things because we know if anyone with malign intentions gets through, the consequences would be catastrophic.
What must the passengers have thought on a flight from Melbourne when a crazed man armed with what appeared to be an explosive device tried to storm the cockpit?
But thankfully for the scores of passengers on board, their ordeal didn’t last long.
Rob Macdonald and others jumped from their seats and pinned him to the ground until he was tied and bound.
Rob plays down his contribution but we have no hesitation in hailing the Scots hero of Flight MH128.