Passenger yelling ‘Allahu Akbar’ attempts to open doors mid-flight from Tel Aviv to London
Heroic Albanian Victor Troboloni pinned down the crazed man after he attempted to open door on Wizz Air plane on Monday.
A crazed man was pinned down after attempting to open the doors midflight aboard a plane en route from Israel to London on Monday.
The unnamed terror suspect was flying on Hungarian airline Wizz Air’s flight W9 4452. He screamed “Allahu Akbar”, meaning “God is most Great” in Arabic before being tackled by a heroic fellow passenger, 45-year-old Albanian Victor Troboloni.
In footage shown by the Sun newspaper, plane engineer Troboloni tackled the suspect and placed him in a headlock. Crew members then managed to use zip-ties to restrain him.
Troboloni told the Sun newspaper: “It was a very scary situation. I was thinking I might never see my mother again.”
He said the man was behaving oddly earlier on the flight, pacing up and down the gangway from the entrance by the pilot’s cabin to the emergency exit at the other end.
“I saw him going up and down, maybe looking for weak points on the aircraft… checking seat numbers I’m a plane engineer myself, I used to work in maintenance. So I know what’s going on mid-air, in flight at 30,000ft, 11km above sea level, you’ve got no escape.
“He tried to open the fire exit, he was sitting at the back and it’s easy to open a fire exit, just pull the handle and that’s it.
“I got the guy down. He was very heavyweight … I headlocked him and the stewardesses tied his hands with plastic cable ties … I had to do it. I held him for 10 minutes, he got out of breath, he got tired, he was tied up for 45 minutes to 1 hour before we landed in Belgrade.”
A Wizz Air spokesperson said: “The company is dealing with the onward flight of all customers to London. The safety and security of passengers and crew are the company’s top priority. The company regrets the inconvenience caused by this unexpected incident.”
The flight was forced to make an emergency landing in Belgrade, Serbia.
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