- A male passenger was pictured seemingly holding a stewardess hostage today
- The Air China flight was flying from Changsha to Beijing but was forced to divert
- Emergency services seen at the scene and unknown what happened to the man
A flight was forced to divert today after a male passenger took a crew member hostage and held a fountain pen to her throat, aviation souces say.
The Air China flight left from Changsha, the capital of the central province of Hunan, at 8.40am.
The plane, which was scheduled to land in Beijing by 11am, had to land in Zhengzhou, just after 9.40am.
A flight was forced to divert today after a male passenger took a crew member hostage and held a fountain pen to her throat
A statement from the Civil Aviation Administration of China said: ‘The incident was successfully dealt with by 1:17pm, and passengers and crew members are safe.’
A photograph posted by China News Service showed a number of firefighters and fire trucks outside Zhengzhou airport.
One witness said: ‘I think someone uttered a cry, which woke us. Everyone was sleeping… it was a woman’s cry. Nobody knew what was going on.’
The crew managed to keep passengers in their seats while the fiasco unfolded.
The Xiaoxiang Morning Herald quoted a passenger as saying the disturbance occurred in the first or business class cabins but that the curtains separating those sections from economy class were pulled tightly shut.
Another passenger said flight attendants told passengers they had to land at a different airport but said they had not heard of anything amiss.
She said: ‘We exited from the back so we didn’t see whatever happened in the front, and didn’t hear anything either.’
Authorities have not released further information about the man’s motives or what happened to him.
The Air China flight left from Changsha, the capital of the central province of Hunan, at 8.40am (Stock image)
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