BEIJING, Sept 3 (AFP) - A man has been arrested for suggesting he might hijack a domestic Chinese flight by telling a flight attendant he wanted to know how much fuel the plane was carrying, state media said Friday.
The Hainan Airlines flight, which was due to fly from the capital Beijing to southern China's Guangzhou city Thursday morning, was delayed for more than an hour but no one was injured, several Beijing newspapers reported.
The unarmed 47-year-old, surnamed Kan, asked a flight attendant the unusual question shortly after he was seated.
"How much fuel does the airplane have?" the Beijing Morning Post quoted him as saying.
When the attendant said she did not know, Kan asked: "Why don't you find out. Without knowing the amount of fuel, I wouldn't know where to go if I hijack the plane."
The flight attendant informed the pilot and Kan was promptly taken off the plane and placed into police custody.
All passengers were evacuated from the Boeing 767 aircraft which was checked for dangerous materials. None was found and the flight later took off.
The incident shows the heightened state of alert on China's airlines following a series of hijackings and attempted hijackings in the past two years and the September 11 attacks in the United States.
Last month a 2,000-strong air marshal force started work on Chinese planes, although it was not clear if any were on board Thursday's flight.
On July 26, a man with a history of mental illness attempted to hijack an Air China domestic flight after it took off from Beijing, demanding to be flown to South Korea or he would spray passengers with sulphuric acid.
The plane made an emergency landing in central China and police detained the man. No dangerous items were found.
Most of the hijacking attempts are carried out by people distressed by personal problems or suffering from mental illness.
In the worst incident, a cancer patient in May 2002 deliberately started a fire on a passenger plane in an apparent suicide attempt so his family could cash in on the flight insurance he purchased before boarding.
The plane plunged into the ocean minutes before it was scheduled to land in Dalian city in the northeast, killing 103 passengers and nine crew members.