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Daily Record
Daily Record
World
Patrick Hill & Hannah Mackenzie Wood

Hero Jet2 passenger restrains woman who stripped and stormed cockpit screaming 'Allahu Akbar'

A hero dad restrained a passenger after she tried twice to storm the cockpit screaming "Allahu Akbar" and claimed to have explosives on a Jet2 flight.

Philip O'Brian was able to secure the woman, who had stripped down to her underwear, into a seat with the help of cabin crew.

While onboard the flight from Cyprus to Manchester, the woman alleged to have a bomb and asked the children she was with if they were "ready to die". She also said her parents were a part of terrorist group Isis.

Drainage firm boss Mr O'Brien, who had a job in security as a teenager, was travelling with six family members including his wife and three children aged eight to 14. He said: "Everything was normal and then shortly after take-off a woman walked up the aisle naked and banged on the cockpit door shouting 'Allahu Akbar'.

"As you can imagine everyone was sh**ing themselves. I spoke to staff and said, 'Why have you not put her to the floor?'.

"They said, 'We're not able to'. I said, 'Well I am'.

Phillip O'Brien restrained a woman who claimed to have explosives on the flight. (Submitted)

"So when the woman went to the cockpit again I took control, took her to the ground and at that point the pilot did an emergency landing to Paris."

Mr O'Brien said he asked the woman, believed to be in her 30s, why she was saying such things and she replied: "If I didn't there's going to be an explosion and everybody is going to die". Jet2 said the Larnaca-Manchester flight was diverted to Paris in the early hours of Tuesday so a "disruptive passenger could be offloaded".

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