Plane Lands Safely, AND On-Time At Destination

The head of Turkey's civil aviation authority says a drunk passenger staged a clumsy, unsuccessful hijack attempt aboard a Turkish Airlines flight from Turkey to Russia on Wednesday.

CNN reports the plane was carrying 164 Russian nationals, and landed safely -- and, it should be noted, on-time -- Wednesday afternoon in St. Petersburg, where Russian authorities promptly arrested a "slightly intoxicated" passenger from Uzbekistan.

Russia's Interfax News Agency cited a national police spokesman in reporting the suspect was in his early-50s, and was arrested on suspicion of trying to hijack the plane.

After Turkish media first rushed to report the plane had been hijacked, a Turkish Airlines spokesman responded that the flight experienced an "urgent situation" as it headed to St. Petersburg, without offering further details.

Airline passenger volume is growing at a pace estimated by Boeing at least twice that of the rest of Europe, and among the domestic industry's growing pains have been three previous hijack attempts in the past two years.

In August of last year, two men hijacked an Istanbul-bound AtlasJet flight, and forced the crew to make an emergency landing in Antalya. Both hijackers ended up surrendering to Turkish authorities.

In April 2007, 178 passengers and crew aboard a Pegasus Airlines flight were unharmed in what Turkish authorities said was an attempt by an unarmed man to hijack the plane to Iran. The suspect was detained after an uneventful diversion to Ankara.

In October of 2006, a Turkish man hijacked a Turkish during a flight from Albania to Istanbul. He forced the crew to fly to a military airfield in Brindisi, Italy, where the passengers and crew were released unharmed.

FMI: www.thy.com