This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

Heavily armed Australian security personnel boarded a Malaysia Airlines flight that was forced to turn back to Melbourne after a passenger tried to enter the cockpit and threatened the safety of those on board.

Flight MH128 departed from Melbourne airport at 11.11pm local time and was scheduled to arrive at Kuala Lumpur at 5.28am. The plane turned back shortly after takeoff when the cabin crew reported a passenger attempting to enter the cockpit.

The passenger was a 25-year-old Sri Lankan man who had been discharged from a Melbourne psychiatric hospital on Wednesday before buying a ticket on the flight, the Victoria region’s police commissioner, Graham Ashton, said.

Andrew Leoncelli, a former AFL player who was in business class, said he saw a man carrying a large black cylinder run towards the cockpit. Leoncelli said the man ran up and down the aisle before he was wrestled to the ground by cabin crew who took the object away.

“There’s a giant black object on this plane, a crazy guy wants to blow it up, who was subdued,” the former sportsman said in a video made on the plane, and seen by the Age.

Leoncelli told the ABC: “I ran to the front and confronted him around the corner and he was there and he was a tall guy, taller than me, with a beanie on, wearing dark clothing, dark skin, carrying a giant thing, a very strange-looking thing with antennas coming off it, saying: ‘I’m going to blow the plane up’ … Staff grabbed the object, we’re not sure what it was, he was claiming to blow the plane up with [it], and walked it back to the front of the plane.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Armed personnel on Flight MH128 after the plane returned to Melbourne. Photograph: Andrew Leoncelli

Leoncelli told the radio station 3AW: “The staff were saying: ‘Sit back down, sir; sit back down, sir.’ He goes: ‘No, I’m not going to sit back down, I’m going to blow the plane up.’

“The staff screamed out: ‘I need some help, I need some help.’ So I jumped up, undid my buckle, and approached him.”

Leoncelli said the man had run to the back of the plane, where two other men grabbed and disarmed him of a “giant black thing” and “put hog ties on him”.

Supt Tony Langdon said flight crew also helped to tackle the man. “We believe that the actions of the passengers and crew were quite heroic,” Langdon said.

Fairfax reported that in air traffic control audio posted online, a male voice could be heard saying: “We have a passenger trying to enter the cockpit.”

About three minutes later the same male voice was heard saying the passenger was “claiming to have an explosive device, tried to enter the cockpit, has been overpowered by passengers.”

“However we’d like to land and have the device checked,” the voice said.

Malaysia Airlines confirmed the diversion occurred “after the operating captain was alerted by a cabin crew of a passenger attempting to enter the cockpit”.

It added: “Malaysia Airlines would like to stress that at no point was the aircraft hijacked.”

Pictures and video posted online by passengers show heavily armed personnel boarding the plane after its return to Melbourne. One video appears to show a man, who had been lying handcuffed on the floor of the plane, being removed.

Brendan Grainger (@S118869) Malaysia Airlines flight #MH128 has returned to Melbourne after a passenger tried to enter the cockpit shortly claiming he has explosives. pic.twitter.com/6PPTLgW1Qd

Victoria’s state premier, Daniel Andrews, offered government support for the passengers stranded by the ordeal. “I don’t think any of us have a true understanding of the trauma, just how frightening this experience would have been,” Andrews said.

Andrews cautioned against governments responding by banning passengers with mental illness. “We want to be very careful not to be driving people away from getting the care they need,” he said. “We don’t want to be stigmatising any more than mental illness is already stigmatised.”

The man, who has been studying to be a chef in Australia on a student visa, is likely to appear in court on Thursday on charges related to endangering a plane or making a false threat, Ashton said. Such charges carry a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.

Flights were temporarily diverted from Melbourne airport to Avalon, near Geelong. Flights have now resumed, though traffic around the area is heavily congested.