MOSCOW, February 7 (RIA Novosti) – A passenger aboard a Turkish airline flight to Istanbul on Friday attempted to hijack the plane by claiming there was a bomb aboard and demanded to go to the Olympic venue Sochi, officials and media reports said.
The Pegasus Airlines flight from Kharkiv, the second-largest city in Ukraine, landed safely at its destination despite the ordeal, the Reuters news agency reported.
Turkey scrambled an F-16 fighter jet to accompany the plane due to the bomb scare, the report said.
Sources told RIA Novosti that the man was drunk at the time.
Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the man was “presumably a Ukrainian national.”
An official from Turkey’s Transportation Ministry said there were 110 passengers on board.
The Winter Olympics opened in Sochi the same day.
It was not immediately clear whether the man was detained.
