Russia has witnessed a lot of terrorist attacks in the past, including bombings of passenger airliners. These tragic events have led to very tight security measures and low passenger tolerance towards potential hijackers.

In the last 10 days, Russian airlines witnessed two new “attacks.” The first one happened on October 15, when a passenger on a Turkish Airlines A320, travelling from Antalya to St. Petersburg, passed a note to the pilots demanding to land the aircraft in Strasburg. Otherwise, he threatened to detonate explosives and take down the airplane with all of the passengers. When the “hijacker” tried to approach the pilots’ cabin, he was tackled and beaten by the passengers. The plane landed, as originally planned, in St. Petersburg. The investigators found no explosives on the now thoroughly beaten hijacker. He was a leader of a non-existent self-proclaimed political party who simply wanted to “gain the media attention.” He gained more than that; little attention, but plenty of injuries and jail time.

Today, on October 24, one of the passengers on a Russian Sky Express Boeing 737, travelling from the resort city of Sochi to Moscow, passed a note to the pilots. He wanted to go to Vienna, or else… the usual threats. The pilots landed the plane in Moscow where the FSB, ambulances, police, and counter-terrorist SWAT teams were ready to storm the plane. The “terrorist” happened to be a drunken passenger who had been recently released from a mental institution. In 2002, Oleg Vasyanovich, the self-proclaimed “terrorist,” killed his own mother. The court found him mentally ill and sentenced him to mandatory psychiatric treatment. Mr. Vasyanovich was released on Friday from the psychiatric institution where he was undergoing therapy. He immediately bought a plane ticket, got drunk, and decided to become a terrorist. It is unclear at this moment whether Mr. Vasyanovich will have to return to the mental institution, or if he will face up to eight years in prison.