Domestic Squabble and Bomb Threat on Pia Flight

Flight Aware
On May 24, 2013, a Pakistan International Airlines Boeing 777-340ER was en route from Allama Iqbal Int’l to Manchester when a stewardess told the Captain Nadeem Sufi that a passenger had threatened to bomb the plane. Sixty miles east of their destination, the pilot diverted to Stansted Airport with a British fighter escort.

Mr. Mohammad Shafqat and Ms. Ammara Ashraf had been fighting with eight family members, and when the argument escalated, the two were taken into custody and then released.

During the domestic fight, two men who approached the cockpit were also arrested aboard the plane, handcuffed, and taken into custody to the police station at Stansted. The case is being treated as a criminal rather than terror case.

There were 11 crew and 297 passengers aboard.

Although the Pakistani High Commission blames the pilot for making a decision that puts PIA in a bad light, we believe that the fact that because Captain Sufi landed the plane without injury or loss of life, then he made the right decision.