Cape Town – Claims that a hijacker was on board, left an SAA plane sitting on the tarmac at OR Tambo International Airport for 40 minutes after landing on Monday.

A News24 User said the reason the captain gave was that the airport authorities and airport police didn’t want the plane to taxi into a parking bay, because there may be hijackers on the plane.

“Eventually the plane did go into a parking bay, escorted by police cars. When they allowed us to disembark there were police everywhere, armed, as well as ambulances and a fire truck.”

A tweet confirmed this. “Just landed at OR Tambo, only to be told by captain they suspect our plane is hijacked! He must confirm his identity first!!” tweeted @sedisemoseneke.

“they let us off the plane but there was fire trucks and police men everywhere!! No one explained what was going on!!”

SAA spokesperson Tlali Tlali told the Mail and Guardian that they’d received information that one of their planes had been hijacked.

He said they were trying to determine where the rumour had originated from, emphasising that there had been no attempt to hijack the plane.