A Sri Lankan man will face court hours after being dragged from an aircraft at Melbourne airport for allegedly making bomb threats on an international flight.
The 25-year-old has been charged with crimes under the Commonwealth Aviation Act as Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull confirmed the incident is not terrorism related.
"I'm informed the man has a criminal history and has previously been treated for mental health issues," the prime minister told parliament on Thursday.
After allegedly making a threat and moving toward the cockpit, the man was grabbed by passengers who tied him up while the Malaysia Airlines flight 128 bound for Kuala Lumpur returned to Melbourne.
"In that one second, there were four of us out of our seats and we pounced on him," passenger Scott Lodge said.
"All of a sudden, someone has him in a chokehold and got his arm behind his back, and the other guy eventually choked him and he passed out."
Some of the 337 passengers on board said the man claimed to have explosives in a device shortly after take-off on Wednesday night.
A Dandenong resident on a student visa, the man was released from psychiatric care on the same day he purchased a ticket and boarded the flight, police said.
Dressed in a police-issued white forensic suit, the man later arrived at Melbourne Magistrates' Court and is expected to make a brief appearance on Thursday afternoon.
Passengers have criticised authorities for making them wait 90 minutes on the tarmac not knowing if there was a bomb on the plane, before special operations police stormed the aircraft.
"If there was a bomb on that plane we should have been evacuated from it. Instead we sat there," passenger Stan Young told reporters.
But Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton said there were initial reports about there being possibly more than one offender or device on board.
"(I) absolutely understand if you are on a plane in that situation, it could seem like a long wait," he said, later confirming it took 54 minutes between units arriving at the airport and boarding the aircraft.
"We have to make sure all possibilities are taken into account, including the possibilities of co-offenders, or, if there was an explosive device, the possibility of there being other explosive devices where the sudden removal of the passengers could cause difficulty."
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews backed the police approach.
"There's a standard process to work through and none of us can really know how traumatic it would have been," he said.
"It would have been certainly worse if police had rushed in and potentially made a bad situation much, much worse."
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