A jilted husband wearing a blue bonnet and carrying a grenade and a gun hijacked a domestic passenger flight in the Philippines yesterday, robbing passengers before jumping out of the aircraft wearing a parachute.
The Philippine Airlines Airbus A330 from Davao city to Manila landed safely in the capital almost an hour late with a rear door badly damaged after it was forced open in flight to let the hijacker bail out over the capital.
An airport official said the army later captured the man, but confirmation from the military was not immediately available.
The chief pilot, Capt Butch Generoso, said the man often appeared close to tears during the hour-long drama.
"The suspect said his family had left him and that his wife had an affair with a policeman," he said.
The hijacker fired a shot into the aircraft bulkhead to force Capt Generoso to let him into the cockpit and then waved his gun and a grenade, with the pin out, at the crew. "He was very angry, very temperamental. The man said, `If you do not do what I say, we will die together'," Capt Generoso said.
One passenger said the man marched up towards the cockpit using a blue bonnet as a mask before taking over the plane.
"All of a sudden, he removed the mask and he was demanding money - and we gave money, all of us shelled out to appease him," he said. The man forced several passengers and crew to collect money from the passengers.
The executive director of the state Air Transport Office, Capt Rolando Luna, said the hijacker forced the pilot to take the aircraft down to 6,000 feet so he could safely jump out.
"It was not a political act. It was purely for money, staged by a mentally and emotionally disturbed person," he said.
The dramatic robbery is not the first. In 1971, an American hijacker, D.B. Cooper, bailed out of a passenger aircraft over the north-western United States with a bag containing $200,000 in ransom money. Despite a massive manhunt, he was never caught, although $6,000 in notes was found along a river in the area years later.
The Philippine Airlines aircraft, capable of carrying 278 passengers plus crew, was quickly evacuated after landing in Manila and checked by security officials using sniffer dogs.