Drama as plane dives

Press, 24 September 1983, Page 11

Drama as plane dives

NZPA Syracuse Passengers shrieked and the pilot screamed “get him off me” when a passenger cut off fuel to one engine on a commuter plane carrying 17 people near New York, sending the craft into a 200-metre nosedive before it was brought under control.

As a passenger and the co-pilot grappled with the man, the pilot pulled the twin-engine Swearingen Metro 2 out of its dive only 60 to 100 metres above the ground, said witnesses. •“My first thought was just to try and grab him ... and when I did, I pulled him back and I confess to hitting

him several times,” said John Henderson, a Bostop University law professor who held the man on the floor anti! the plane landed safely at Hancock airport. None of the 15 passengers or two crew members aboard the Empire Airlines Flight 841 en route from Washington to Montreal were injured in the incident, which lasted less than two minutes, said authorities. A police spokesman said that Christopher Bradshaw, aged 27, had been charged with four counts of attempted murder. One witness speculated that Bradshaw was trying to commit suicide, but the police said they knew of no

motive. As the 19-seat plane approached the Syracuse airport at 300 metres, Bradshaw suddenly arose and bolted towards the pilot, said the police. A spokesman said that Bradshaw went through an open curtain into the cockpit, reached between Captain J. B. Whitehead and the first officer, Marshall Banks, and pulled back the throttle, instantly cutting off the fuel flow to the plane’s left engine. “After the man flipped the switch, the pilot screamed ‘get him off me, get him off me’,” said Dave Stanton, a TV cameraman who was on the plane.