A passenger having a mental health episode was heading for the emergency exit. He lunged for the door handle, screaming
I
write thrillers: mostly historical mysteries. In September 2024, I was returning from a literary festival in Italy, where I had been talking about my latest book. It was a Ryanair flight, and as we came in to land at London Stansted, I heard people behind me shouting. I looked back to see some of them were standing up. A moment later a big man – I would guess he was 6ft 4in, and powerfully built – burst through them. He headed towards an emergency exit and lunged for the door handle, screaming. Behind him, a smaller guy was clambering over the tops of the seats, shouting: “It’s not terrorism. It’s not terrorism. Mental health!”
While exit doors can’t be opened when a plane is at full altitude because the air pressure inside is too great, levels dip during descent, and it is possible to open them. I feared that if he opened the exit, the plane would be hard to control and we might hit the ground about 300mph faster than we were meant to.
A woman in the exit aisle was struggling with him, but she couldn’t stop him. I sprinted down and barged my shoulder into his chest, knocking him over. As he collapsed, the smaller man got hold of his shoulder and we dragged him to the floor. The smaller guy – who turned out to be a friend of his – was still yelling “It’s not terrorism” but everyone around us was screaming.
