A chilling revelation has shown that a pilot of a huge airplane threatened to crash the plane if his wife ditched him.
A pilot threatened to crash his plane and kill all 200 passengers on board if his wife went ahead with a threat to leave him.
The Italian pilot sent his wife a text message threatening to bring down the aircraft on the long-haul flight from Rome last year.
It has only just been made public now as police revealed he was stopped minutes before take off on the Japan-bound flight.
The Times reports that the unnamed man, in his 40s, was stopped after his wife alerted authorities about his worrying message.
Passengers were not told about the incident.
It came just two months before Germanwings co-pilot Andrea Lubitz deliberately crashed a passenger plane into the French Alps, killing 149 people. He had locked the pilot out of the cockpit when he'd gone to the bathroom, taking control of the plane and flying it into the side of a mountain.
The Italian pilot, who has been suspended, is undergoing psychiatric evaluation after it was revealed he had previously been reported to police by his wife for mistreatment.