An Air China flight was forced to make an unscheduled landing after a passenger held a flight attendant hostage with a fountain pen, the country’s civil aviation authority said. All passengers and crew on Beijing-bound Flight 1350 made it safely off the plane after it landed in Zhengzhou city due to what authorities had described earlier as an unspecified "illegal interference.” bangkok shanghai flightIn a brief statement on its website, the Civil Aviation Administration of China said a male passenger attempted to use a pen to hold the flight attendant "under duress”. Chinese police said preliminary investigations found the 41-year-old passenger, identified only by his last name, Xu, had a "history of mental illness”. It said he suffered an unspecified "sudden” psychological disorder when he grabbed the flight attendant. In a statement, the Zhengzhou airport said it immediately activated emergency measures, adding the passengers who disembarked were in a stable mood and the airport was operating normally. The Beijing News said on its Weibo microblog page a passenger described being awoken by a scream coming from the front of the plane and "nobody knew what was going on.” The Xiaoxiang Morning Herald quoted a passenger saying the disturbance occurred in the first or business class cabins, but the curtains separating those sections from economy class were pulled tightly shut. She looked out the window and saw many police cars, ambulances and fire engines parked outside the plane as it was landing in Zhengzhou, the newspaper said in a Weibo post. The passenger described seeing armed personnel in camouflage uniforms assembled in two or three rows.

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