A Turkish Airlines Airbus A-320 was in the air on Wednesday when a passenger handed a flight attendant a note for the pilot reading, “I have a bomb. If you don't take me in (to the cockpit) I will blow it up,” the airlines' director Temel Kotil told Anatolia news agency. “The man then attempted to walk towards the cockpit,” he said. The pilot refused to open the door and the assailant was overpowered by passengers, he said. The man had no explosives. But he was highly charged. He was drunk. The charter flight from the Mediterranean city of Antalya to Saint Petersburg in Russia had 164 passengers on board. “The hooligan landed with everyone else. He has been taken off the plane and handed over to police,” an unnamed official from Saint Petersburg's Pulkovo Airport was quoted by Interfax as saying. There were contradictory reports about the man's nationality. Turkish officials identified him as an Uzbek national named Yasa Rashidov but the Russian airport official quoted by Interfax called him “our countryman.” Turkey is a popular destination for Russian tourists, and heavy drinking is common among Russian airplane passengers going on holiday or returning. home after vacation.
