Family row diverts PIA flight, Britain scrambles jets

British police on Friday arrested two air travelers on suspicion of endangerment of the aircraft after forcing a Pakistan International Airways (PIA) Manchester-bound flight with 297 passengers on board to land at Stansted airport following a mid-air alert.

According to sources both the British nationality-holder Pakistanis were arrested after they reportedly had a spat with the crew.

According to PIA sources the suspects had allegedly threatened to bomb the plane with explosives. A panicked stewardess alarmed the pilot, Captain Nadeem Sufi, who sent a stress signal to London control tower triggering the security alert, which led to the forced landing of the plane.

Initially Essex Police said a man and a woman had been arrested and removed from the plane, which is on an isolated runway at the airport.

Reportedly, it all started after Mohammad Shafqat and Ammara Ashraf, traveling with a number of other family members, engaged in an argument, which went out of control forcing the crew to intervene, who were warned to stay out of it.

The quarreling family went as far as threatening the crew that they were going to blow the plane up, which caused the panic. However, they were released after police found out it was a petty domestic squabble.

Earlier, Royal Air Force (RAF) Typhoon jets were scrambled to intercept the PIA flight, which escorted the Manchester-bound flight to Stansted.

Flight PK709 from Lahore was due to land at Manchester Airport in northwest England at 1230 GMT. The plane was diverted to Stansted airport, east of central London, according to a Manchester Airport spokesman.

The news comes two days after a soldier was hacked to death on a London street in an incident the government are treating as a terrorist incident.

PILOT AT FAULT

In Lahore, senior PIA officials blamed Captain Sufi for the incident.

“There is a standard operation procedure (SOP) that if there is an unruly passenger on the plane, the pilot can seek police intervention upon landing of the plane. This is what should have happened. Instead, the pilot mishandled the situation bringing a bad name to the country and the airline,” a senior PIA official said on the condition of anonymity.

“The PIA is an airline which runs on ethnic basis—mostly expats fly the airline and passengers often engage in verbal arguments. In most cases the arguments have involved Kashmiris,” he added.

He said the PIA should conduct assessment and psychological analysis of its employees so that they can manage such situations without creating a crisis and bringing a bad name to the country.

PIA’S SIDE OF THE STORY

A PIA statement said that Flight PK 709 from Lahore to Manchester was diverted to Stansted as a safety measure. “The flight was diverted to Stansted airport on receiving a threat to the aircraft from two passengers to a PIA crew member who informed the captain. The captain of the aircraft immediately contacted the air traffic control UK and on the instructions received, the captain landed the aircraft at Stansted airport. The two passengers have been taken into custody by UK authorities and are being questioned,” the statement said.

CRIMINAL INCIDENT

• UK police arrest two British-Pakistanis for endangering aircraft

The British police said they are treating the incident as criminal rather than as terror-related.

“It’s a criminal investigation under the direction of Essex police,” Superintendent Darrin Tomkins told reporters at Stansted airport.

Asked if it could be terror related, he added: “This incident is being treated as a criminal offence.”

“The plane will remain at its current location and will subject to forensic examination by specialist officers. At this point in time no suspicious items have been recovered.”