The man who carried out the first trans-Atlantic hijacking in 16 years was armed with what turned out to be a starter's pistol smuggled aboard the Lufthansa jet with a little sleight of hand, authorities say.
No one was injured during the 11-hour ordeal, which began over Austria about 40 minutes into Thursday's flight. It ended when the Airbus 310 with 104 people aboard landed safely at Kennedy Airport and the hijacker surrendered.Nebiu Zewolde Demeke, 20, an Ethiopian student living in Morocco, made two demands: that the plane be flown to New York and that he receive political asylum, Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Roche said. Initial reports that Demeke also demanded the United States intervene in Bosnia were false, Roche said.
Demeke was to be arraigned Friday, on charges of air piracy, which carry 20 years to life in prison.
Flight 592 had taken off from Frankfurt, Germany, for Cairo, Egypt, and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, when the hijacker stormed into the cockpit, pointed a gun at the pilot and said, "If you do not turn west, I'll shoot you," recalled the pilot, Gerhard Goebel.
Demeke had gotten the gun past security at Frankfurt airport by hiding it under his hat and placing the hat on a table as he passed through a metal detector, then picking up the hat as he headed for the plane, a law enforcement source said on condition of anonymity.
The gun turned out to be a starter's pistol that fired only blanks, police spokesman Sgt. John McCluskey said.
In the tense hours that followed the takeover, the hijacker threatened a flight attendant and several passengers, and the captain struck a deal with him. "I said that if he would give me the gun, I would give him my sunglasses," Goebel said.
The jet landed at Kennedy at 3:50 p.m. and taxied to a remote area of the airport. Twenty minutes later, the gunman gave the gun to the captain, who held it up to the plane's window to show officers outside. Goebel took off his sunglasses and handed them to the hijacker.
When he surrendered, the hijacker left behind the hat and a note for the pilot, said James M. Fox, head of the FBI's New York office. The note read: "Thank you. Here's yours. Tschuss" - German for "So long."
The last time a hijacked plane crossed the Atlantic was in September 1976, the FAA said. Five Croatian nationalists forced a New York-to-Chicago TWA flight to Paris, where they surrendered.