Amidst high security concerns, the presence of “40 heads of state and leaders including UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and Chinese President Xi Jinping” at the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, and the deployment of 40,000 Russian policemen and soldiers to protect the Games, a Ukrainian man tried to hijack a Turkish 737 today and force the pilots to fly to Sochi.

Here’s coverage from the Associated Press and Times of Israel:

• Turkey scrambled an F-16 jet Friday to force down an airliner from Ukraine when a would-be hijacker on board ordered it to Sochi where the Winter Olympic opening ceremony was underway, Turkish officials said.
• Turkish media reported that a Ukrainian man brandishing a detonator tried to gain access to the cockpit of the aircraft operated by Turkey’s Pegasus Airlines while it was in the air.
• He was overpowered by security forces when the Boeing 737-800 airliner landed at Istanbul’s Sabiha Gokcen airport at 6:05 pm local time. He was taken to an undisclosed location for questioning.
• “A Pegasus Airlines plane with 110 people on board had to land at Sabiha Gokcen airport because of a passenger who threatened passengers with a bomb,” said Habib Soluk, deputy Turkish transport minister.
• “We are sure that he didn’t enter the cockpit. We know that the aircraft was hijacked before it entered Turkish airspace,” he said.
• The aircraft departed from Kharkov, Ukraine for the scheduled flight south over the Black Sea to Sabiha Gokcen. The hijacker wanted to divert it east to Sochi, the Russian city on the Black Sea coast.
• When the man tried unsuccessfully to get in the cockpit, the pilot emitted a hijack alert and the Turkish F-16 military jet was scrambled.
• The plane was immediately stormed by Turkish anti-terrorism commandos after it landed and the man seized, reports said.