and interview him and find out what was going on in his head that he thought he would be able to fly to sochi. everybody is so nervous right now given the heightened security concerns involving the winter olympic games in sochi. you have to err on the side of caution. right now, yeah. there s such a state of alertness, let s say, somebody could pull out a tube of toothpaste to brush their teeth and everybody would dive for cover at this point. so things are in a heightened state of alert and they have to be. there s no choice around that. but an individual thinking he s going to fly into sochi, then what? now you re there, now what. hold on for a moment because ivan watson is our correspondent also in sochi. he s joining us. ivan, you re picking up some more information? reporter: that s right. our sister network cnn turk has been reporting that according to turkish security officials, the suspected hijacker on this pegasus air flight has been captured by turkish special forces
airline hijacking connected to the opening of the olympic games in sochi. cnn has learned that the suspected hijacker wanted a turkish airliner diverted to sochi. our nick paton walsh is on the ground for us in sochi right now. the plane is in turkey, right, nick? tell us what we know. reporter: well, at this point, yes, it s in the sabiha gokcen airport in istanbul. now, it was flying from ukraine, from the eastern city of kharkhov there. it had 110 passengers on board according to turkish officials. it appears that one of them during that flight while the plane was in air and its route takes it over the black sea behind me or close to it, one passenger said that he d stashed or he knew there was a bomb on board and asked the pilot to divert the plane to sochi here. now, clearly whatever happened, the pilots didn t choose to take that threat seriously enough or obey the man who threatened them. they instead landed in istanbul,
anywhere on that airplane that justifies the threat, but they had to take it seriously. they had to land the plane. walk us through the protocol. you are on a flight, let s say from ukraine to turkey, a regularly scheduled flight, pegasus airlines and some passenger says, take me to sochi. i ve got a bomb. right. well, in that situation the pilot has a discrete way of notifying ground control that he has a hijack situation so he can press a button and discretely notify the authorities that there s a threat on that aircraft and, you know, it looks like hijacking to him. but during the course of events on the flight, and it would be a relatively short flight, the pilot would have his judgment that maybe this guy is just not right, that he s mentally unbalanced and that, you know, may be able to fool him and say, okay, here we are. welcome to sochi and they re actually in istanbul and they re able to evacuate the passengers quickly and then take him into custody and then now start the
want to update you on the breaking news we ve been following out of turkey, a pegasus airline, airliner, there you see it, it s a turkish airliner, private turkish airliner, was forced to land back in istanbul after a passenger on board claimed there was a bomb in the belly of that plane. wanted the plane to go to sochi for the winter olympic games. for some reason, we don t know what the motivation of the suspected hijacker was, but the pilot managed to fly the plane instead to the airport in istanbul, where it landed safely, escorted by an f-16 turkish air force fighter. the plane is on the ground. we understand that the suspected hijacker is in custody. we don t know what the motivation might have been, but there was obviously heightened sense of concern, security concern as a result of the open this being the opening day of the winter olympic games in sochi, but once again, that pegasus airliner is now on the ground in istanbul.
yet, but it does seem given the plane is now on the ground, remember, in the 1970s a substantially lengthy standoff between plane hijackers and police. this is over fast these situations, often, it may be that this situation is now behind and under control, but we re still waiting to get the full picture, wolf. if you want to fly to sochi, you fly to frankfurt and connect in frankfurt or fly to istanbul and connect in istanbul, i assume there are flights from moscow to sochi as well, right? reporter: absolutely, absolutely. the one i was referring to istanbul and frankfurt because that threat about the toothpaste tube was focused on flights coming from europe. most flights down to here go through moscow. and as many of us experienced ourselves, it s erratic. it s not universal, but the russians do try and not let you bring liquids on in your carry-on. so that s another thing here, too, suffingt suggests a height anxiety about toothpaste tubes as well. we don t know if this flight h