Passengers aboard a WestJet flight from Toronto to Edmonton knew something was terribly wrong when a man on board the flight began pacing the isle and threatening “non-believers.” When he made a move for the door, they decided to take action.
Passenger Steven Kelly told CTV News he was sitting in the fourth row back from the cockpit when an unidentified man, 20, walked from the back of the plane to the front two times during the four-hour flight.
He said he knew the second time the man made his way to the front of the plane that “something was going to happen.”
Kelly said the man asked the flight attendant to let him off the Boeing 737 while it was still in the air.
The flight attendant then asked for help, and Kelly, along with other passengers, helped subdue the unruly man.
“We ziptied him, and they brought him to the back of the plane where they held him for about a half hour or so until we landed,” Kelly told CTV.
Kelly said another passenger told him the man had been praying during the first three hours of the flight, but his motivation was unclear.
“The entire time he was calling us ‘non-believers’, and if there were any believers on board, to kill him,” Kelly added. “He definitely wanted to get out of that plane, he definitely wanted to die.”
He added that he heard the man say “Allah” a few times.
“I don’t honestly know if he was trying to open the door, he definitely was moving towards the door, he was only a few feet away from it,” he said.
Watch coverage of the incident below:
Royal Canadian Mounted Police arrested the man upon landing. The airline declined to make further comment but said Wednesday an incident had occurred on one other flight.
It’s a good thing the other passengers on this place reacted quickly to what was obviously a dangerous situation.
