300 Passengers Survive Nightmarish Ordeal Aboard London-to- Nairobi Flight
JEANNE MESERVE, CNN ANCHOR: More than 300 passengers on a British Airways jumbo jet are thankful to be alive after a nightmarish ordeal aboard a London-to-Nairobi flight this morning. Tim Wilcox has that story.</s>TIM WILCOX, ITN REPORTER (voice-over): Safely on the ground this morning Nairobi Airport, Flight 2069 after a terrifying mid-air drama that came just seconds away from tragedy. Forcing his way into the 747's cockpit six hours into the flight, a deranged passenger grabbed the controls from the flight crew disengaging the autopilot, and sending the packed plane into potentially lethal nosedives.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Suddenly, the plane just started shaking really, really violently. Everyone's stuff was going everywhere, people were standing up, everyone was falling over, and the plane was tipping from side to side.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Disbelief, this couldn't have been happening. Bit of a shock, that it was happening. Very scary at times.</s>WILCOX: Many passengers screamed and prayed for their lives, as Captain William Hagan (ph) and his team wrestled the man to the ground. Questions are now being asked about how easy it was for the attacker to break in.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I can never remember in my 37 years of experience this ever happening to us before. When something like this does happen, our crew are trained to deal with it immediately. And this is exactly what happened today. They intervened, they restrained the man, and the aircraft was under control very, very quickly.</s>WILCOX: Four passengers and a stewardess were treated for minor injuries. The attacker, a suspected mental patient, is now under arrest. Tim Wilcox, ITN.