Summary A drunk passenger yelled there was a bomb on board and tried to divert the flight to Sochi.
ISTANBUL (AFP) - Turkey scrambled two F-16 jets Friday to force down an airliner from Ukraine when an apparently drunk would-be hijacker ordered it to Sochi where the Winter Olympics opening ceremony was underway.
The Ukrainian man, brandishing what he said was a detonator, tried to gain access to the cockpit of the aircraft operated by Turkey s Pegasus Airlines with 110 people on board, officials said.
The Interfax-Ukraine news agency reported that the man was inebriated. The agency and Istanbul s governor Huseyin Avni Mutlu said the man had neither a gun nor explosives.
"A Ukrainian man, born in 1969, was in an advanced state of drunkenness and tried to get into the cockpit, shouting Let s go to Sochi ," Interfax-Ukraine quoted Ukrainian security services as saying.
"The man will answer for his hooligan behaviour."
In the air, the pilot emitted a hijack alert and the Turkish F-16 military jets was scrambled. The Boeing 737-800 airliner landed at Istanbul s Sabiha Gokcen airport at 6:05 pm (1605 GMT).
The plane was then immediately stormed by Turkish anti-terrorism commandos, reports said.
Turkish television channels showed images of the aircraft surrounded by ambulances, fire engines and police vehicles with flashing lights after it touched down.
Istanbul s governor said that the man had been taken into custody and that all passengers were evacuated safe and sound.
After landing the man "thought at first that he had landed in Sochi. It took some time for him to realise we were in Istanbul," Mutlu said.
The aircraft had taken off from Kharkov, Ukraine for the scheduled flight south over the Black Sea to Sabiha Gokcen. The man wanted to divert it east to Sochi, the Russian city on the Black Sea coast.
Television channels showed a still image of the would-be hijacker with short hair and wearing what looked like a red-white-and-blue ice hockey shirt with the number 11.
