Passenger Threat Causes Canadian Flight To Divert, Return To Toronto
BURNETT: Returning to our breaking news that we have just brought you, about two U.S. fighter jets escorting a Canada to Panama flight after a passenger allegedly threatened the plane with 181 passengers and six crew members. We now have video from inside this jet. It was a Sun Wings Airline plane. You can see the chaos and the yelling, the commotion. Just wanted to play so you can hear the screaming that is going on there.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Head's down. Head's down.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hands up.</s>BURNETT: A report that a man who was an agitated customer who was shouting for the passengers and the crew to put their, quote, heads down and hands up. So that's that voice you hear there, "heads down. Heads down." You can hear that. Susan Candiotti is Outfront. And Susan, what are you learning?</s>SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, what a frightening flight this had to have been for the people on board, as you said. Everything started off normally when the plane took off at 7:00 in the morning from Toronto heading to Panama. About 45 minutes into the flight, this passenger allegedly makes a threat to endanger the aircraft in some way, makes that threat directly to a member of the crew. The crew then notifies the pilot, the pilot notifies the FAA and Canadian authorities and the plane turns around, but not before NORAD gets involved, scrambles a jet and escorts the this plane back to Toronto where it lands safety. And that video, very dramatic as you heard and see. As you mention, the commotion aboard that plane when you hear the words "heads down, hands up, heads down, hands up in the air." And you see that happening. You see some apparently flight attendants there. As there is a second video that we also I believe are trying to show to you where you see members of a SWAT team boarding the plane armed to the hilt with weapons and trying to take the situation under control. Of course the suspect is taken into custody and authorities identify him as Ali Shahi. He is a Canadian citizen, 25 years old. He is being charged with a number of things, including mischief to property, interference with a flight crew and endangering that aircraft. He will appear in court tomorrow. More to come.</s>BURNETT: All right. Susan, thank you very much with the latest that we know. David, this is just adding to the frightening, you know, over the past week, series of crashes and frightening situations in the air.</s>DAVID SOUCIE, FORMER FAA SECURITY INSPECTOR: And passengers are losing control like that. This happened several times recently. And I think part of it is that there is all this going on with the aviation. And people get on board and they're nervous and they don't know what is going on. You know, it's time to...</s>BURNETT: The planes are oversold, seats are small, quick turnarounds.</s>SOUCIE: Exactly. Take the time to breathe, get on board, because this stuff does happen and to the most unsuspecting people. The last guy who did this had no previous history of anything like this, it just it got to him and he broke out. But the last thing you want to do is get accused of endangering the safety of an aircraft. You people joking about it, some movies even joke about having a bomb on board the aircraft, that is something that is now a federal offense. He will be going to jail for a long time.</s>BURNETT: He'll go to jail. And I think a lot of people would support that and completely understand that. Miles, we don't yet know whether this was just an empty threat, whether -- we don't know the full situation in this case. But to David's point, this has happened several times recently. You had a co-pilot of one plane saying that the plane was going down and rushing back and luckily there was a security conference, the plane was on its way to Las Vegas and people were able to tackle him.</s>MILES O'BRIEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: You know, I think this points out kind of the unsung last line of defense that we all have right now in the sky from Shanksville, Pennsylvania to the shoe bomber, the underwear bomber, to the incident you just mentioned -- passengers are ready to take matters in their own hands. And we shouldn't underestimate the value of that in the whole safety chain that is important. One thing I want to point out, though, I find it very interesting given what was going on in the aircraft now. Maybe they had him subdued, but why didn't that captain make a decision to land sooner and quicker? Cincinnati was nearby, Dulles was nearby, any number of airports. Instead he turned around for 45 minutes and flew back to Toronto where they are based. Maybe he had too much fuel to land. He was too heavy. Maybe he wanted Canadian jurisdiction, I don't know. But that is interesting to look at.</s>BURNETT: It is. And David, I want to just play, we do have the new cell phone video. You heard Susan just reporting that we had this. This is the video. This is when a SWAT team boarded the plane. You can see heavily armed as that plane landed. This is footage of that SWAT team. As I said heavily armed, David, boarding the plane. Yeah, and we're not actually playing the audio on it.</s>SOUCIE: OK, but that's what happens when they get on board, because you don't want to say anything or do anything and people stop.</s>BURNETT: People stop. And there is that moment of fear. Now they were obviously taking this threat very seriously. There was a fighter jet escort. Does that show how seriously they took the threat or is the response from the government also linked to these other horrific incidents that have happened in the past week?</s>SOUCIE: No, this is a matter of protocol. And that aircraft is an international flight. It has to go back to that country if at all feasible. So that's why those fighter jets were dispatched to get it back out of this country. It can't be in the country at that point. Even if it puts a little bit more risk to the passengers, they're international passengers.</s>BURNETT: Wait, so you're saying even if there is a more risk to passengers that they could blow up and die, they are going to tell them to try to go to their own country?</s>SOUCIE: No, no. The risk is assessed. If they don't think that it is a credible threat then they can make that decision. If it is deemed a credible threat at that point, then they would have taken action against it. But the fact that the protocol is that this aircraft has to be escorted back out of the country to ask it to land in the country would have been a violation of international protocol.</s>BURNETT: All right, thanks to both of ou. We appreciate it. We're going to continue as we get more information on this. Of course, we're going to bring it to you. But Outfront next, accusations that Vladimir Putin is sending more rocket launchers to rebels in Ukraine. So the world says don't do it, we're going to punish you and he does it even more. A couple whose child died on flight 17 is trying to make sense of it. Tonight, CNN follows their journey. They are going to the crash site.