A Canadian man has been charged with hijacking a small plane this week and flying it over one of the busiest airports in Canada, prompting fears he would crash into something and causing flights to be delayed or grounded.
It began Tuesday at a flight school at Victoria International Airport, about 40 miles south of Vancouver, when 39-year-old Shaheer Cassim “threatened a flight instructor” and took control of a Cessna 172 aircraft, according to a statement from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
The plane belongs to the Victoria Flying Club, which operates about 12,000 flights a year, including sightseeing tours, charters and discovery flights.
“We’ve had people bang a wing tip into another plane, you know, fender benders … I mean, all of that stuff happens when you run a flight school because you are teaching people to fly,” club president Colin Williamson told CNN newsgathering partner CBC. “But this? No, never. It’s just completely out of the blue.”
He said the hijacker showed up and said he wanted to be a passenger on a flight.
After allegedly commandeering the small aircraft, Cassim took off by himself and flew north to Vancouver International Airport. He circled the runways, forcing nine other planes to divert and prompting controllers to warn aircraft to watch out for him.
“Encore 3584, the International’s been shut down due to terrorist activity,” a controller told a WestJet regional pilot in audio from LiveATC.net. “What is your alternate?”
“There is some type of protest going on above the airport with a Cessna,” another controller radioed multiple planes. “In case anything starts heading towards you, you have the ability to move at your discretion.”
Cassim acted with “an ideological motive to disrupt airspace,” police spokesperson Sgt. Tammy Lobb said in a statement.
Police did not say what he was protesting, however, CNN newsgathering partner, CTV, identified a social media account from a man with the same name who was a pilot in the area.
“I am a messenger of Allah. I am the messiah sent to save humanity from climate change and usher in an era of world peace,” the Facebook post said on Monday, the day before the hijacking. “The Arctic sea ice is going to disappear within two years. When that happens, huge amounts of methane are going to erupt from the Arctic Ocean, triggering abrupt runaway global warming, turning Earth into Venus.”
The North American Aerospace Defense Command scrambled fighter jets, but the Cessna safely landed before they arrived and Cassim was arrested.
Cassim appeared in court on Wednesday to face one count of hijacking. The judge ordered him to remain in jail until his next court appearance on July 22. The court currently does not have a lawyer listed for him.
Under Canadian law, the crime of hijacking includes using force or threats of force to cause an aircraft to change from its flight plan.
CNN’s Paula Newton Contributed to this report.
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