A plane flying from the Siberian city of Irkutsk to Moscow on Friday was forced to make an emergency landing at Chelyabinsk's Balandino airport because of a singing passenger, Russian news agency RIA Novosti reported.
According to Elena Epimakhova, a representative of the Urals region headquarters of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the incident took place around 6:30 a.m. local time.
"The plane requested a landing and landed at the airport in Chelyabinsk. One of the passengers, a woman born in 1988 (possessing dual citizenship — Russian and Israeli) is suspected of temporary psychosis. During the flight she got up, started pacing around the passenger compartment, singing songs, and pouring water on the passengers. She didn't seem to comprehend what was going on; the flight attendants kept trying to sit her back down, give her warnings, but in general she wasn't taking in the information," Epimakhova said, RIA Novosti reported.
She added that the captain decided to land the plane at the nearest airport, which happened to be in Chelyabinsk. Upon landing, police removed the woman from the airplane and brought her to a medical center. Officials first assumed that she had been drinking, but upon examination, doctors determined that her blood alcohol content was normal. The woman was then checked into a local psychiatric hospital.
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