A hijacking that diverted a domestic Egyptian flight to Cyprus has ended with all hostages released and the hijacker surrendering.
EgyptAir Flight MS181 was taken over by a passenger claiming to be wearing a suicide explosive belt.
Airline officials later said they had been told by Cypriot authorities that the belt was fake.
The hijacker’s motives remain unclear but the Cypriot president said the incident was not terrorism-related.
No-one was injured in the hijacking, Cypriot government spokesman Nikos Christodulides tweeted.
After a morning of tension, the hijacker was seen walking down aircraft steps at Larnaca airport with his hands raised.
Some reports said the Egyptian man – named by Cypriot officials as Seif Eldin Mustafa – wanted to talk to his estranged Cypriot wife who lives on the Mediterranean island, while others said he was seeking the release of female prisoners in Egypt.
It is only some small comfort that the man who hijacked Egyptair flight MS181 was bluffing. The bulging white “suicide belt” with wires sticking out turned out to be a fake.
It at least means that this time Egypt cannot be accused of letting someone smuggle explosives through airport security and on to an airliner as they did in October at Sharm El Sheikh airport, destroying a Russian passenger jet in mid-air.
But it still triggers a number of worrying questions about aviation security.
How was it that a passenger, described by the Cypriot authorities as “mentally unstable” was able to carry enough materials through Alexandria airport to resemble a bomb?
And what is to stop any future airline passenger, similarly unarmed, from pretending that he or she has a real device strapped to them?
For Egypt’s battered tourism industry, that has yet to recover from the October airline bombing, this hijack is a further blow it can ill afford.
