‘Overpowered’: Passengers Beat 2 ‘Hijackers’ to Death on Chinese Flight

 

The moral of this story is: Don’t try to hijack a plane in China.

Two would-be plane hijackers were beaten to death by passengers and crew aboard a flight bound for the regional Chinese capital of Urumqi on Friday, The Global Times reports. The men died in the hospital from the injuries they suffered at the hands of those whom they thought would be their victims.

There were a total of six men involved in the foiled plot to hijack the Tianjin Airlines flight. All of the men were reportedly Uyghurs, a local Muslim ethnic minority.
Less than 10 minutes after the plane took off from Hotan airport in southwest Xinjiang, China at 12:25 a.m., the men, aged 20 to 36, announced their intentions to horrified passengers and attempted to storm the cockpit using a “broken crutch” made of aluminum as a weapon.

But before they could get to the cockpit, they were tackled by passengers and crew members who tied them up with belts and restrained them until the plane made it back to the airport about 20 minutes later. There were reportedly 92 passengers and 9 crew members on the flight.