Dad restrains woman who stripped to underwear and tried to break into cockpit on Jet2 flight

The woman allegedly claimed that there were explosives on board before she was arrested in Paris

A Jet2 plane at Manchester airport [file picture] (Getty Images)

A father-of-three was flying with his family from Cyprus to Manchester when he stepped in to restrain a woman who stripped down to her underwear and tried to enter the cockpit twice.

Phillip O’Brien, 35, was travelling on the Jet2 flight last week with six members of his family, including his wife and children, when a woman in her 30s walked up the aisle in just her underwear shortly after take-off.

The disruptive passenger tried to gain entry to the cockpit twice and, when staff were unable to restrain her, Mr O’Brien stepped in to help secure her to a chair while the flight was diverted to Paris.

The woman allegedly claimed that there were explosives on board and asked the children if they were “ready to die”. According to Mr O’Brien, she also claimed that her parents were members of terror group Isis.

He said he asked the rowdy woman why she was saying such things and she replied: “If I didn’t there’s going to be an explosion and everybody is going to die.”

Mr O’Brien, from Macclesfield, who is the owner of a drainage firm and worked in security when he was a teenager, told The Mirror: “Everything was normal and then shortly after take-off a woman walked up the aisle naked and banged on the cockpit door shouting ‘Allahu akbar’.

“As you can imagine everyone was sh***ing themselves.

“I spoke to staff and said, ‘Why have you not put her to the floor?’. They said, ‘We’re not able to’. I said, ‘Well I am’.

“So when the woman went to the cockpit again I took control, took her to the ground and at that point the pilot did an emergency landing at Paris.”

Another passenger said that the unruly woman’s behaviour left her daughter so terrified that she had a “massive panic attack”.

The woman had started screaming about 10 or 15 minutes after the plane took off and her “crazy” behaviour lasted for hours, according to the unnamed traveller.

She told MailOnline: “It was just crazy. At first it looked like she was drunk – she had the suitcase on her head. The cabin crew said she wasn’t drunk as they had smelt her breath.

“I don’t know how she got through security.”

Jet2 said the Larnaca-Manchester flight was diverted to Paris Charles de Gaulle airport in the early hours of Tuesday 9 August so that a “disruptive passenger could be offloaded”.

Footage filmed by a passenger shows French police boarding the plane to take the woman into custody.