EgyptAir Passenger Recounts Terrifying Mid-Air Hijacking
The suspected hijacker was arrested and all hostages were eventually freed.
— -- A passenger who survived a hijacked EgyptAir flight today was terrified the hijacker would "take the plane and crash it in the sea."
"Or...he’s going to bomb it, that’s what came to my mind. With these people you never know," passenger Farrah El Dibany told ABC News' Terry Moran via Skype. "You can never feel safe unless you leave the plane."
El Dibany was on a routine flight from Egypt's Alexandria’s Borg El Arab Airport headed to Cairo.
The plane was in the air for one or two hours when the cabin crew "informed us that we’ve been hijacked," El Dibany said.
El Dibany, who is from Alexandria, Egypt, said the crew said didn't know much but "they were trying to calm us down."
She said the hijacker was sitting at the back of the plane and was taken behind a curtain by crew members. She said the hijacker didn't talk to the passengers, just the crew.
"We didn’t know where we were heading...it was very horrifying," El Dibany recalled.
Some women cried, El Dibany noted, but said "it wasn’t that chaotic on the plane."
The crew then told the passengers they would land at Larnaca International Airport in Cyprus.
"With the news about landing, it felt much better, safer, but still not 100 percent safe...[the hijacker] can still do something after landing," she said.
She continued: "We still didn’t think that he would leave, that he would let us go, that we’re going to stay in the plane until they negotiate. We were still terrified."
She said the suspected hijacker eventually allowed all Egyptians, including herself, to leave the plane.
"I was so relieved, I couldn’t believe it," she said. "I didn’t believe it would have a happy ending...usually in these cases, you never have a happy ending."
The man accused of hijacking the flight, identified by the Foreign Ministry of Cyprus as Seif Eldin Mustaf, had wanted to redirect the flight to Istanbul, but the plane did not have enough fuel so he opted for Cyprus, Cyprus Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Margarita Kiriakou said.
When the plane landed at the airport, the hijacker initially released everyone but the captain, his co-pilot, a flight attendant, a security guard and three passengers.
The suspected hijacker had several demands including speaking with his former wife who lives in Larnaca. Police brought her to the airport and "they spoke for a while," Kiriakou said.
Eventually the man was arrested and all the hostages were released.
The suspect had a “suicide vest” that contained no explosives -- just mobile phone cases made to look like a suicide belt, Kiriakou said.
El Dibany told ABC News the airport security check in Egypt was "precise" and "better than usual."
Officials said the hijacking was not terrorism-related but may have been motivated by a personal issue.
Kiriakou said the suspected hijacker "will be kept in custody and legal procedures will follow."
ABC News' Rashid Haddou contributed to this report.