On an early morning flight from Cyprus to Manchester on Tuesday, a 35-year-old father was forced to take charge after a female passenger stripped naked and tried to storm the cockpit, shouting “Allahu Akbar.”

Phillip O’Brien, a 35-year-old father of three, was on a Jet2 flight from Larnaca, Cyprus to Manchester when a woman on board began to cause mayhem within the aircraft.

The woman, whose name has not been made public, was making it seem as though she had explosives on board with her, and asked the children she was with if they were “ready to die.”

She also announced to the plane that her parents were part of ISIS, and tried twice to storm the cockpit.

“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’,” O’Brien reported to The Sunday Mirror. “As you can imagine everyone was sh***ing themselves.”

O’Brien, a drainage firm boss, began to wonder why no one had restrained the woman.

“I spoke to the staff and said, ‘Why have you not put her to the floor?’ They said, ‘We’re not able to.’ I said, ‘Well I am,'” recounted O’Brien. “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.”

O’Brien, who used to work in security, reported that while he was restraining the woman, who is believed to be in her 30s, he questioned her about why she was doing this, to which she responded, “If I didn’t there’s going to be an explosion and everybody is going to die.”

35-year-old Manchester father, Phillip O’Brien

Another passenger on the Jet2 flight reported on her own experience during the chaotic flight, saying, “I was more worried about my daughter – she was so scared, she had a massive panic attack. You were just terrified of what she was going to do when you closed your eyes.”

“It was just crazy,” the passenger added. “At first it looked like she was drunk – she had the suitcase on her head. The cabin crew said she wasn’t drunk as they had smelt her breath… I don’t know how she got through security.”

“The cabin crew said ‘we’ve asked the pilot to call this in as an emergency landing.’ It didn’t feel it was a terrorist incident,” the passenger told MailOnline. “We landed in Paris and sat on the plane for an hour while they sorted out the logistics. The Frenc refused to refuel us, I think because it was around 3 or 4 am.”

Footage from the plane was shared on social media that shows French police officers on board the plane who appear to be restraining the disruptive woman after the plane landed in Paris.

WATCH:

Join The Conversation. Leave a Comment.


We have no tolerance for comments containing violence, racism, profanity, vulgarity, doxing, or discourteous behavior. If a comment is spam, instead of replying to it please click the ∨ icon below and to the right of that comment. Thank you for partnering with us to maintain fruitful conversation.