Journey at one in every of Canada’s busiest airports was briefly halted Tuesday after federal police obtained a report {that a} small airplane had been hijacked, officers stated.
Royal Canadian Mounted Police within the western Canadian province of British Columbia stated that at 1:10 p.m. native time they obtained a report {that a} Cessna 172 “had been hijacked from the Vancouver Island space and was coming into into airspace close to Vancouver Worldwide Airport.”
“The suspect was the only real occupant of the plane,” the assertion added.
In a recording of air site visitors management posted to liveatc.internet, an official will be heard stating: “Now we have an incident proper above our airspace right here — a hijacked 172,” the Vancouver Solar reported.
The airplane landed in Vancouver at 1:45 p.m. and the “suspect was arrested with out incident,” the RCMP stated, declining to supply additional particulars.
Images published by public broadcaster CBC and video shared online present the small white Cessna surrounded by safety automobiles on a runway after touchdown in Vancouver.
The CBC reported the Cessna was operated by a flying membership in Victoria, the provincial capital situated on Vancouver Island.
Witness Paul Heeney informed the CBC that he was driving when he observed a small airplane flying low and banking to the suitable.
“A couple of minutes later, we noticed a second cross … the airplane was making a giant clockwise circle,” he stated.
Vancouver Worldwide Airport stated in a statement that 9 inbound flights have been diverted in the course of the incident with a short lived halt to operations ordered throughout the airport within the West Coast metropolis. Flights have been grounded for 39 minutes.
Airport head of communications Stephen Good told the CBC that it “may have lasted so much longer.”
“This isn’t one thing that we’d expertise frequently,” Good stated
