Passengers Recount Japan Jet Drama in Which Hijacker Seized Controls

One woman noticed the fidgety man across the aisle and wondered why he was wearing gloves when the temperature outside was 91 degrees. Another passenger saw him get up from his seat aboard All Nippon Airways Flight 61 and figured he had a complaint.

Then the man pulled an 8-inch knife on a flight attendant on the upper deck of the Boeing 747, stormed the cockpit and slashed the pilot to death in Japan’s first deadly hijacking.

Forty-nine minutes later, the jet returned to Tokyo’s Haneda Airport and landed safely with the 516 other people aboard uninjured.

The hijacker, an unemployed man, told police that he was a fan of computer flight-simulation games and wanted to fly a real plane, a Haneda police official said on customary condition of anonymity.

When the man hustled the attendant down the aisle, “I was afraid to look at his face because he might say, ‘What are you looking at?’ and take a stab at me,” said a 61-year-old passenger who identified himself only by his last name, Okawa.

Once inside the cockpit, the hijacker forced the co-pilot out and ordered the pilot to steer toward the U.S. military’s Yokota Air Base in western Tokyo, the police official said.

When the pilot refused, the hijacker stabbed him in the neck and seized the controls.

The plane suddenly lost altitude after the hijacker burst into the cockpit, passengers said. At one point, the plane descended 2,000 feet in five minutes, to 1,000 feet above the ground, the Transportation Ministry said.

“I really thought this was it,” said Yasuhiro Fukuda, a 42-year-old musician.

Unnerved by the drop in altitude, the co-pilot and another ANA pilot who happened to be aboard burst into the cockpit and pounced on the hijacker.

Others helped tie him up with neckties and belts while the off-duty pilot took the controls.

The hijacker, 28-year-old Yuji Nishizawa, was arrested after the plane landed, said Norio Chichi, deputy police chief at Haneda Airport.

The pilot, Naoyuki Nagashima, 51, was pronounced dead by a doctor on board shortly after Flight 61 landed, Transportation Ministry official Satoshi Iwamura said.

The government tightened security at airports across Japan and launched an investigation into how the suspect got a knife aboard.

Accounts from the cabin depict a flight thrown into quiet terror once the hijacker pulled out his knife.

“Take me to the cockpit,” Chichi, the deputy police chief, quoted Nishizawa as saying to the flight attendant minutes after takeoff for Sapporo, in northern Japan.

The crew told passengers that the plane had been hijacked and urged them to remain quiet. They showed videos of the popular “Pokemon” cartoon to keep children from panicking, passengers said.

A home video shot in the cabin during the hijacking showed people sitting quietly. Passengers later praised the crew’s efforts to reassure them.

“I was shocked when I learned that the pilot was killed,” said Miharu Hondo, who was on vacation.

The hijacker apparently just wanted to try some aerial tricks involving the majestic span across Tokyo Bay.

“I wanted to fly under the Rainbow Bridge and make a loop,” Kyodo News agency quoted him as telling police.

Other reports said he suffered from depression.

Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi sent condolences to the pilot’s family. ANA’s president apologized.

Passengers said that even before the hijacker pulled out his knife, there were signs that he was troubled. One told NHK, the national TV network, that he saw the man leave his seat and speak quietly to a flight attendant before seizing her.

Yoshiko Kawase, 60, said she noticed the man while he was still in his seat because he appeared nervous and was wearing dirty white cotton gloves.

She heard someone “shouting in a threatening voice” in the cockpit but could not understand what he was saying.