Airplane ‘hijack’ insanity

Madman thwarted

Gene Parente took one look at the man — pounding on the door of the cockpit with a plastic bag on his head — and he knew the Korean Air flight attendants were in trouble.

The guy was about the size of Parente (inset), 6 feet tall and 190 pounds. The flight attendants were all about a foot shorter and 100 pounds lighter.

So Parente, 54, stepped up when one of the young women pleaded: “Sir, please, I need your help. It’s an emergency.”

The call came early in the final leg of a Seoul-to-Seattle jaunt Thursday, a chaotic scene: the passenger, screaming at the top of his lungs, trying to get to the plane’s controls.

“That was my worst post-9/11 fear,” Parente told The Post on Saturday, back home in San Diego. “I went into full-panic mode.”

The man screamed that he had a bomb and wanted to go to Vancouver, Canada, because he had never been there before, according to court documents.

Parente was groggy, just coming out of a long nap, when he heard the commotion. The guy pushed Parente and they started trading punches.

Then a chase down the aisle and back up again — the passenger, the flight attendants, Parente and two pilots all along for the ride.

“It was just bedlam,” said Parente.

The two pilots separated the duking duo. Then they realized what was going on. What truly terrified Parente was when the man told him, “I won’t talk to anyone but you.”

Parente led him back to his seat, but he bolted again. The man knocked down one flight attendant and another pulled out a Taser, sending sparks flying.

Parente jumped on the man, wrestling him to the floor. The pilots piled on.

“He was like a wild animal,” Parente told The Post.

The trio put giant zip ties on the man and sat on him for about 40 minutes, until the plane landed.

The passenger, identified as Gyeong Jei Lee, a Korean native who lives in Colorado, is facing federal charges of interference with a flight crew and assault on an aircraft.