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The alleged attempted hijacking of a Malaysia Airlines plane at Melbourne Airport is a sign that the threat of rogue passengers causing September 11 style terror attacks isn't over.
Manodh Marks allegedly claimed to be carrying a bomb and attempted to storm the cockpit of flight MH128, just minutes after take-off at 11.11pm on Wednesday night.
Tackled to the ground by other passengers, Marks was subdued for more than an hour before gun-wielding special operation officers entered the plane to arrest him.
While the Sri Lankan national wasn't carrying a bomb, a terror expert has warned that someone taking control of a plane and using it as a weapon could happen again.
'There's still a possibility (that) someone could repeat the 9/11 scenario, break into a cockpit and hijack a plane,' Deakin University counter-terrorism expert Greg Barton told news.com.au.
Prior to the World Trade Centre attacks on September 11, 2001, most plane hijackings were done by in an effort to divert the aircraft away from its intended destination.
Similarly, bombs onboard passenger jets were most often put their by someone on the ground, not willing to put themselves in the firing line should it blow up.
But according to Mr Barton, that all changed with the deaths of 2.966 people on 9/11.
'The logic was that people wouldn't blow themselves up. Now that logic doesn't apply,' he said.
'You could hijack a plane to turn it into a weapon for a suicide mission.'
After disembarking flight MH128 in the early hours of Thursday, passengers said that was exactly what they feared when Marks allegedly attempted to take control.
'I've got a bomb and I'm going to f***ing blow the plane up,' former AFL footballer Andrew Leoncelli, who confronted the man, quoted him as saying.
'He started yelling louder: 'I need to see the pilot'. And got louder and louder and eventually they screamed for help,' Mr Leoncelli said.
'So that's when I jumped up. I said, 'Mate, get back to your f***ing seat'.'
'Literally he was eyeball to eyeball with me saying he was going to blow the plane up... he looked like a lunatic.'
Mr Leoncelli said the man, who was tall and had dark skin, was holding a 'huge, metallic, unusual' object the size of a watermelon with two short antennas.
'We spent an hour and a half sitting on the plane sh***ing our dacks that this thing might blow up,' he told Triple M radio.
Marks faces two charges against the Crimes Aviation Act and appeared in the Melbourne Magistrates' Court on Thursday afternoon.