Norwegian pilots ATTACKED by axe..

[Josephine96]

Norwegian pilots land plane after axe attack by passenger

1 hour, 50 minutes ago Top Stories - AFP



OSLO (AFP) - A passenger attacked two pilots aboard a Norwegian passenger plane with an axe but the craft was later able to land, police said, amidst concerns over lax security on the country's local flights and at regional airports.




"The two pilots were able to land the plane after the attack. They were hospitalized and their life is not in danger," Bodoe police officer Margrete Torseter told AFP.


According to police, a man of Algerian origin in his mid-30s attacked the two pilots on a local Kato Airlines flight linking the two northern towns of Narvik and Bodoe with an axe when the plane was preparing to land at around 10:45 a.m. (0845 GMT).


One of the seven passengers aboard the plane, a small Dornier 228, was also lightly injured in the attack.


The two pilots and the injured passenger, who are between 30 and 45 years old, suffered "light head injuries", the local Bodoe hospital said in a statement, adding that "their conditions are stable".


The attacker was, according to police, arrested upon landing at Bodoe airport.


Police refused to divulge any further information about the man or about the motivation behind the attack.


"He has not yet been interrogated," Bodoe police officer Arve Westgaard told AFP.


It remained unclear Wednesday afternoon whether the man had smuggled an axe onto the plane or had used a security hatchet already onboard in the attack.


"To begin with we thought that we were dealing with a fire hatchet onboard the plane. But it turns out now that it doesn't have any identifiable markings on it that would support this theory," another Bodoe police officer Bjarte Walla told AFP.


"I have not received any confirmation on the origin of the weapon, but I can confirm that our planes are equipped with a hatchet as part of the emergency equipment," head of Kato Airline Oerjan Nyborg told AFP.


Asked whether he felt it was prudent to store axes on the company's planes, Nyborg said: "I cannot disregard equipment that is required by the plane manufacturer."


Another possibility is that the man smuggled the axe onto the plane in Narvik, which like many of Norway's small regional airports is not equipped with metal detectors.


"It would be very simple since we don't have any security control here in Narvik," Nils Rognli, who heads up the Narvik airport for the Norwegian civil aviation authority Avinor, told AFP.


We have "the good, old fashioned system as it was in the past where you just get on the plane", he added, pointing out that he has the equipment needed for security screening, but that it has not yet been installed.


Starting on January 1 next year, all of Norway's airports, including Narvik, will be required to use metal detectors to screen all passengers and all carry-on luggage.


According to Kato Airline's Nyborg, there were no alerts to any incidents on the flight before the attack.





"The first message we received was after the plane had landed," he said.

The plane was inspected by military sniffer dogs after it landed in Bodoe.

Kato Airline, which services two regional routes in Norway, suspended all of its flights for the remainder of the day.