Hijacker Selfie

About

Hijacker Selfie refers to a photograph of a British flight passenger smiling and posing with Seif Eldin Mustafa, an Egyptian man who hijacked EgyptAir Flight 181 and held its passengers hostage for several hours at Larnaca International Airport in Cyprus on March 29th, 2016. Upon entering online circulation, the picture quickly went viral on Twitter and elsewhere in the social media.

Origin

On March 29th, 2016, EgyptAir Flight 18 was hijacked by a passenger claiming to be wearing an explosive belt while en route from Borg El Arab Airport in Alexandria to Cairo International Airport in Egypt. Shortly after taking control of the plane, the hijacker forced the pilot to divert and land the plane at Larnaca International Airport in Cyprus, where he held four crew members and three European passengers hostage for several hours and demanded to see his estranged wife living in the country. By 2:41 p.m. local time, the crisis had ended with the release of the remaining hostages (shown below, left) and the arrest of the hijacker, who was identified as 58-year-old Egyptian national Seif Eldin Mustafa. Later that same day, a photograph of an unknown male passenger smiling and posing with Mustafa began circulating on Twitter (shown below, right).

Spread

Throughout the day, the photograph went viral across the world and prompted varying reactions in the social media, with many scorning the passenger as being irresponsible and narcissistic for exploiting a hostage crisis into a souvenir photo-op, while some took more lighthearted jabs at the "hijacker selfie" with photoshopped parodies or humorous commentaries and a few others cheered him on for seizing the moment and taking the selfie game to a new height.

Identity

The smiling passenger in the photograph was subsequently identified by several news outlets as Ben Innes, a 26-year-old health and safety auditor for the British oil and gas waste management firm TWMA in Leeds, United Kingdom (shown below, left). As the news media coverage of the selfie and the man in the photograph continued to develop, a screenshot of Innes' self-complacent text messages sent to his friends at home after the hostage crisis ended also emerged online (shown below, right).

"Selfie" Debate

In the following days of Innes' rise to accidental fame on the Internet, many people in the social media raised issues with the use of the term "selfie" to describe the photograph, as it had been taken by an unseen flight attendant, rather than Innes himself.^[13][14]

Search Interest

External References