Panicking passengers on a Malaysia Airlines flight that had to return to Melbourne because of a bomb scare were trapped on the tarmac for 86 minutes due to police bungling, a source claims.
Police did not storm the plane for more than an hour, during which time some passengers still believed a live bomb was on board.
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Passengers' fearful 90-minute wait on MH128
As MH128 passenger Carol Wood waited for police to board their Malaysia-bound flight, she wondered whether the "bomb" was real or not.
It is understood the delay was partly caused by the failure of an on-call officer to respond to an emergency message.
But it is has also emerged that the Australian Federal Police did not tell Victoria Police the incident had occurred until six minutes after the plane had landed.
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Officers responding to the crisis were further held up, after being unable to locate firearms and body armour, the source said.
A man brandishing a device which he claimed was a bomb threatened to blow up the flight, MH128, late on Wednesday night.
The plane was turned around 10 minutes after leaving Melbourne for Kuala Lumpur.
The 337 passengers and crew on board were forced to wait in their seats for an hour, and possibly longer, after the flight landed safely back in Melbourne, according to multiple accounts from passengers.
A police source said the responding officers had been poorly briefed and thought for up to an hour that the man may have been carrying an explosive device.
It is also understood they had not been told where the man was being restrained when they stormed the plane almost 1½ hours after it landed.
The extraordinary delay raises troubling questions about staffing at Melbourne Airport and an apparent failure to plan for such an incident.
Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton said police had received information suggesting more than one perpetrator was on the plane and there was a possibility of more bombs.
The 25-year-old Sri Lankan national, in Australia on a student visa, had been released from a psychological facility on Wednesday and bought his plane ticket hours later.
He is being questioned and is expected to be charged with endangering the safety of an aircraft and making threats or false statements, which both carry a maximum penalty of 10 years jail, and face court later on Thursday.
Mr Ashton says there was no evidence of any terrorism links.
He said he sympathised with frustration that the operation took so long to get passengers off the flight. But he said there was no indication the delay was unnecessary or as the result of any failure on behalf of police.
"There was no lack of response, there was no delay in response," he said.
Mr Ashton said after assessing a full chronology of the event he was "not seeing any time gaps or delays that were problematic".
"We certainly appreciate that when you are on a plane in a situation one minute can seem like an hour, it can seem like an interminable wait.
"If this was the US or Europe they'd probably still be on the plane."
But in evidence to a Public Accounts and Estimates Committee hearing at state parliament later on Thursday, Mr Ashton revealed that the AFP did not tell Victoria Police about the incident until six minutes after the flight landed.
The flight departed at 11.11pm, and landed at 11.47pm. Passengers on board claim the incident occurred 10 minutes after take off.
It is unclear when the AFP was informed of the incident, and how long it took for the AFP to notify Victoria Police.
Mr Ashton confirmed the AFP handed control of the incident to Victoria Police at 11.53pm on Wednesday via a radio call to the D24 communications centre.
The critical incident response team head arrived at 12.23am, and the special operations group two minutes later. Police entered the plane at 1.21pm, Mr Ashton said.
Premier Daniel Andrews backed the police response.
"The police have to know exactly what they are dealing with before they gain entry to the plane and potentially make a bad situation much, much worse," Mr Andrews said.
But Opposition Leader Matthew Guy said with eight exits on board and the suspect "hog tied" authorities should have been able to evacuate the plane more quickly.
"We need to know why did it take so long to get these people off this plane," Mr Guy said.
"It has taken 80 minutes, if there was a bomb on board and it is full of fuel and there is 200 passengers that [evacuation] needs to be done very, very quickly."
Some passengers claimed they were told by airline staff it would only be 10 minutes after landing before police took the man from the plane, and they would be allowed to leave.
But the wait was significantly longer, and they felt they left in the dark about whether the threat had been contained.
The man had been subdued within minutes of making the threat, and the device he was grasping was soon found to be benign.
Passengers on board, however, remained on edge, with some involved in containing the man.
Other passengers were not told what had occurred until after police boarded the plane.
John Coyne, a senior analyst specialising in border security at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, said many of the issues raised in the Lindt Cafe Siege Inquest would have been playing out.
"It's the difference between going into a quick action operation – which is when something bad is continuing to happen – or taking a more deliberate approach," Dr Coyne said.
"No one was getting hurt and my understanding is that there had been a visual check of this football-shaped device and it didn't look like a bomb.
"The situation was under control, the passenger was restrained and had no access to the device."
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