Larnaca, Cyprus
As more became known about the motive of the 59-year-old Egyptian who was taken into custody, authorities characterized the commandeering of the EgyptAir jetliner not as an act of terrorism but more like a “family feud” with his former wife.
The aviation drama ended peacefully on the tarmac of Larnaca airport on the island nation’s southern coast with the surrender of a man identified by Cypriot and Egyptian authorities as Seif Eddin Mustafa.
The incident was likely to renew concerns about Egyptian airport security months after a Russian passenger plane was blown out of the sky over the Sinai Peninsula in a bombing claimed by the Islamic State group.
But Egyptian officials stressed that their security measures were not to blame, and there was praise for the EgyptAir flight crew. Pilot Amr Gamal told The Associated Press: “We rescued all the people and the man got arrested.”
EgyptAir Flight 181 took off from the Mediterranean coastal city of Alexandria for a 30-minute hop to Cairo with at least 72 people aboard, Cyprus police said, including about two dozen foreigners.
At some point, the hijacker claimed to have explosives in his belt and forced the pilot to fly the Airbus 320 to Cyprus, Egyptian authorities said.
Egyptian passenger Farah el-Dabani told the Dubai-based Al-Arabiyah TV network that the hijacker was seated in the back of the aircraft and that it was the crew who told passengers that the plane was being hijacked.
“There was panic at the beginning, but the crew told us to be quiet. They did a good job to keep us all quiet so the hijacker does not do anything rash,” she said in a telephone interview.
After the jet landed in Larnaca about 9 a.m., the hijacker asked to speak to his Cypriot ex-wife, who was brought to the airport, and he sent out a letter from the aircraft to give to her, said Cypriot Foreign Minister Ioannis Kasoulides.
The foreigners on board included eight Americans, four Britons, four Dutch, two Belgians, a French national, an Italian, two Greeks and one Syrian, the Egyptian Civil Aviation Ministry said. The nationalities of three other foreigners could not be determined immediately.
Most of the passengers were freed, and they calmly walked down a set of stairs from the plane, carrying their hand luggage and boarding a bus. But he kept on board seven people: four members of the flight crew and three passengers.
Mustafa later asked to speak to European Union representatives, and among his demands were the release of female inmates held in Egyptian prisons.
“It was one demand he made, then dropped it and made another,” Kasoulides said. “His demands made no sense or were too incoherent to be taken seriously.”
From the start, “it was clear that this wasn’t an act of terrorism,” he added.