The man who allegedly threatened to blow up a Malaysia Airlines plane before passengers tackled him to the ground and restrained him with seat belts could face up to 20 years behind bars if found guilty.

Sri Lankan Manodh Marks, 25, who has been living in the outer Melbourne suburb of Dandenong on a student visa, on Thursday afternoon was mentioned in Melbourne Magistrates Court after being charged with endangering the safety of an aircraft and making false threats in relation to a mid-air drama that forced Malaysia Airlines flight 128 bound for Kuala Lumpur to turn back.

“He does have concerns for his safety in custody,” defence lawyer Tess Dunsford told the magistrate, adding her client suffers from a psychiatric illness and would not be applying for bail.

Brave passengers pounced on the 25-year-old Sri Lankan national and put him in a chokehold until he passed out.

Flight MH128, carrying 330 passengers, was forced to turn back to Melbourne on Wednesday night afterMarks allegedly tried to enter the cockpit, yelling: “I’ve got a bomb and I’m going to f***ing blow the plane up.”

Police have confirmed there was no bomb, saying the item was an everyday electronic device. While some media have reported it as an iPod music dock, police declined to confirm what the item was.

Passenger Scott Lodge says the man allegedly grabbed a flight attendant by the arm before she screamed for help.

“In that second, there were four of us out of our seats and we pounced on him – he just didn’t expect it at all,” Mr Lodge told AAP.

“All of a sudden, someone has him in a chokehold and got his arm behind his back, and the other guy eventually choked him and he passed out.”

Another of the passengers who helped tackle the man, Robert Macdonald, said he thought the man was on drugs.

“I couldn’t see if he was drunk but his eyes were glazed; we had him down and his eyes were just staring and glassed,” he said.

Marks had been released from psychiatric care at the Monash Medical Centre on Wednesday, Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton told media.

The man was subdued by passengers. Photo: Twitter

Arif Chaudhrey was also onboard the flight and helped stop the man.

“Staff screamed ‘Help! Help! Help!’ … I was about four to five seats from where it happened,” Mr Chaudhrey told the ABC.

“A couple of us guys quickly jumped to grab that guy.

“The staff [got] a spare seatbelt so we handcuffed him at the back, his legs and hands, and put his face on the floor.”

Dhana Sekaran, who said he was a passenger on the plane, tweeted: “About eight guys, of course including me, jumped and restrained him.”

Victoria Police Superintendent Tony Langdon praised the heroism of the passengers.

“I would say that it would have been quite heroic for the crew and passengers to restrain this person,” Superintendent Langdon said.

Long wait on the tarmac for police to board

Passengers criticised police for making them wait 90 minutes on the tarmac, not knowing if there was a bomb onboard.

“If there was a bomb on that plane we should have been evacuated from it. Instead we sat there,” passenger Stan Young told reporters.

Mr Lodge said people were “on edge, anxious, nervous, worried”.

“Eventually Team SWAT come rolling in with the biggest guns ever, the full works, heads down.

“He got absolutely ripped out of that airplane within five seconds of them getting on, they were awesome.”

Heavily-armed police wearing helmets and body armour and carrying rifles boarded the plane and put the man under arrest.

Armed officers finally board the plane after its forced return to Melbourne. Photo: Supplied

Mr Ashton said there were initial reports about there being possibly more than one offender or device on board.

“(I) absolutely understand if you are on a plane in that situation, it could seem like a long wait,” he said.

“We have to make sure all possibilities are taken into account, including the possibilities of co-offenders, or, if there was an explosive device, the possibility of there being other explosive devices where the sudden removal of the passengers could cause difficulty.”

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews backed the police approach to the incident.

“There’s a standard process to work through and none of us can really know how traumatic it would have been,” he said.

“It would have been certainly worse if police had rushed in and potentially made a bad situation much, much worse.”

Charges laid

Mr Ashton said the man was being interviewed by Victorian and Federal Police, and he was expected to face Melbourne Magistrates’ Court later on Thursday.

He has been interviewed over Commonwealth offences including making threats and false claims, and endangering aircraft safety.

Mr Ashton said both carry a maximum of 10 years in prison.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull told Parliament the incident was not being treated as a terrorist event.

“I can confirm that the matter is not currently being treated as terrorism-related,” Mr Turnbull said on Thursday, adding the man had a criminal past and confirming he been treated for mental health issues.

The passenger was restrained by the time police entered the plane.

Timeline of events

MH128 departed Melbourne Airport at 11.11pm to Kuala Lumpur, but landed back in Melbourne at 11.41pm.

About 30 minutes into the flight, the man claimed to have explosives in a device.

Passenger and former AFL player Andrew Leoncelli, who was sitting in business class, told the ABC he saw the man carrying a big object go towards the cockpit and become agitated.

“I ran to the front and confronted him around the corner and he was there and he was a tall guy, taller than me with a beanie on, wearing dark clothing, dark skin, carrying a giant thing, a very strange-looking thing with antennas coming off it, saying, ‘I’m going to blow the plane up, I’m going to f***ng blow the plane up’.”

He said the man then ran to the back of the plane, where he was overpowered by other passengers and tied up while the plane was diverted back to Melbourne.

فيديو | لحظة اقتحام القوات الخاصة الأسترالية للطائرة الماليزية #MH128 و القبض على الراكب الذي هدد باختطافها pic.twitter.com/gqq77kI2G9

— عشاق عالم الطيران (@AviationWG) May 31, 2017

Fairfax Media reported that an air traffic control audio posted online, a male voice can be heard saying: “We have a passenger trying to enter the cockpit.”

About three minutes later, the same male voice can be heard saying the passenger was “claiming to have an explosive device, tried to enter the cockpit, has been overpowered by passengers”.

“However we’d like to land and have the device checked,” the voice reportedly said.

The plane landed safely and was sent to a remote part of the tarmac. Melbourne Airport was put into lockdown and all other flights were diverted to Avalon, near Geelong.

Malaysia Airlines stressed that at no point was the aircraft “hijacked”.

The airline said passenger safety was of the utmost priority and apologised for the inconvenience.

Passengers were accommodated in hotels and offered the next available flight to Kuala Lumpur.

Malaysia Airlines plane pictured grounded at Melbourne Airport after alleged bomb threat

What was the device?

Mr Leoncelli described the device as being “the size of a watermelon with two antennas”.

Malaysia’s deputy transport minister told global news agency AFP the device was in fact a powerbank, such as those used to charge phones and tablets.

Others described the device as a “boombox”.

Victoria Police Superintendent Tony Langdon would not identify the “electronic device” but he said it “posed no threat” and was a piece of equipment which “is something that everybody would be carrying around on a daily basis”.

“It was quite quickly ascertained it wasn’t an explosive device,” he said.

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