Semi-naked woman tried to enter cockpit on Jet2 flight from Cyprus

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

Phillip O’Brien, 35, was on holiday with his family when a fellow passenger stripped to her underwear and tried to storm the plane cockpit twice, claiming she had explosives.

He heroically restrained a passenger after she stripped to her underwear and twice tried to storm a plane cockpit shouting “Allahu Akbar”.

O’Brien got the woman in a hold and helped crew members secure her in a chair on the Jet2 flight from Larnaca.

She had alleged explosives were on board and asked the children she was with if they were “ready to die”.

It is claimed the woman, in her 30s, said her parents were members of the terror group Isis before the pilot diverted to Paris, and she was led away.

Drainage firm boss O’Brien, who worked in security as a teenager, was with six family members, including his wife and three children aged eight to 14.

He said: “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’.

The dad took it upon himself to restrain the woman, and shortly after, the flight was able to make an emergency landing.

“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 to Paris.”

O’Brien said he asked the 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”.

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