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A witness has told of how police stormed an Air New Zealand flight and hauled off a struggling woman after a pilot was stabbed on a flight from Blenheim this morning.
Andrew Sare, 41, said the dramatic scenes "were like something out of a Bruce Willis movie" after emergency services were alerted to the stabbing and a reported bomb threat during the flight.
"There were sirens going off everywhere and from the volume of police cars I thought there was a plane crash," Mr Sare said, as he looked on from the Koru Lounge at Christchurch airport.
"They basically chased down a plane while it was in the air. It looked like something out of a Bruce Willis movie."
Mr Sare said the police cars closed in on the plane as it landed in the middle of the runway.
Members of the armed offenders charged into the plane and hauled out a woman and placed her in handcuffs and forced her to the ground.
"They looked really slick," Mr Sare said.
"They really knew what they were doing. It was struggle, she did not go easy."
He said an injured pilot was then lifted out of the aircraft into a waiting ambulance and paramedics treated the pilot.
"He looked in a bad way. But he may have been in shock," Mr Sare said.
"It was hard to tell from 50 metres."
The pilot was put into an ambulance and taken away while police marched the handcuffed woman into the aircraft terminal.
Soon after, Mr Sare and hundreds of others in the airport terminal were forced to evacuate.
The announcement was made over the intercom that the airport was effectively closed.
Hundreds of people remain gathered outside the airport as the premises remain off limits.
