Pilot hijack

A co-pilot has been arrested after he forced the Ethiopian Airlines plane he was helping to fly from Addis Ababa to Rome to divert to Geneva

Ethiopian Airlines flight ET702, a Boeing 767-300 carrying over 200 passengers, landed safely at Geneva and all passengers and the remaining crew were released.

The overnight flight was hijacked over Sudan and circled Geneva at least six times while being escorted by military jets and was in danger of running out of fuel before touching flown at 6am local time.

According to a Geneva Airport spokesman Bertrand Staempfli the co-pilot said he seized his chance when the pilot went to the bathroom and locked the captain out. “He said he felt threatened in his country and wants to seek asylum in Switzerland,” Mr Staempfli told AFP.

 The man, born in 1983 and an Ethiopian citizen, contacted Geneva Airport and said “he needed to land to fill the [fuel] tank. “Then he announced the hijacking,” Staempfli said.

After the landing the co-pilot left the plane by scaling down the pilot escape rope from the cockpit window. Apparently the co-pilot did not have a weapon although by locking the captain out of the cockpit he didn’t need one. He will face a Swiss Court late Monday local time.

Ethiopian Airlines said it is making “immediate arrangements to fly its customers on-board the flight to their intended destinations."

The alert was raised after the Ethiopian Airlines 767 squawked 7500 the hijack radio code. According to LiveATC tapes there was mention of low fuel warnings and the world “asylum” is used several times.

In 1996 three men hijacked Ethiopian Airlines flight 961, another Boeing 767 and tried to get the pilot to fly to Australia.

ET961 had taken off from Addis Ababa for a flight to Abidjan via Nairobi, Brazzaville and Lagos.

Shortly after entering Kenyan airspace the men seized the plane. However they refused to allow the pilot to land to refuel and the plane ran out of fuel and crashed just off the Comoro Islands, east of Mozambique.

The pilot attempted to carry out a controlled ditching in the shallow, sheltered waters 500m off Le Galawa Beach but one wing tip and the engine hit the water first and the 767 broke up. Tragically 127 of the 175 passengers and crew on board died in the crash.