On the morning of 29 March 2016, EgyptAir flight MS181, an Airbus A320 on the short domestic hop from Alexandria’s Borg El Arab airport to Cairo, turned north instead and landed at Larnaca in Cyprus. A passenger had told the crew he was wearing a suicide belt. Six hours later he walked off the aircraft with his hands up, the belt turned out to be fake, and nobody had been injured.

A Belt Made of Phone Cases

The hijacker, identified as Seif Eldin Mustafa, claimed to be wearing explosives. The aircraft landed at Larnaca and negotiations began on the ground. Most of the passengers were released early, while Mustafa kept a handful of passengers and crew on board. His demands were confused: he asked to speak to or send a letter to his Cypriot ex-wife, and at various points was reported to have asked to meet EU officials, to fly on to another airport and to free women held in Egyptian prisons. Cyprus’s president said the episode had nothing to do with terrorism, and the Cypriot foreign ministry described him as psychologically unstable. The belt, Cypriot officials said, was made of mobile phone cases.

The standoff ended around midday local time. One man climbed out of the cockpit window and Mustafa surrendered to Cypriot counter-terrorism officers. All passengers and crew came off unharmed. An Egyptian official summed him up in one line, widely quoted at the time: he was not a terrorist, he was an idiot.

The Photograph

What made the hijacking famous was a picture taken during it. Ben Innes, a 26-year-old British passenger, was among the last people still held on board. He asked a member of the cabin crew to translate a request to the hijacker: could he have a photo with him? Mustafa agreed, and Innes stood grinning beside him while, by his own account, a stewardess took the picture. Innes later called it the best selfie ever, although, as his mother pointed out, he did not take it himself.

The image spread around the world within hours and drew as much criticism as admiration.

What the Viral Post Gets Right

The account going around is accurate: an EgyptAir flight hijacked in 2016, a passenger called Ben Innes who asked to pose with the hijacker, a belt that turned out to be fake and an ending with no injuries. One small correction: despite the name, it was not a selfie. By Innes’s own account a flight attendant took the photo.

Sources: ITV News (29 March 2016); The New Daily, quoting The Sun (30 March 2016); Vice News (29 March 2016); Yorkshire Evening Post (March 2016); The Scotsman (March 2016); Runway Girl Network (March 2016).