June 29, 2012, 7:19 a.m. ET

Passengers Foil Hijacking Attempt in China By JAMES T. AREDDY

SHANGHAI—Sky marshals and passengers aboard a plane in China"s restive western province of Xinjiang on Friday overpowered a group of six people attempting to hijack the aircraft, official media reported.

Minutes after the Tianjin Airlines flight with 101 people aboard took off from the city of Hetian in southwestern Xinjiang, three passengers in the front and three in the back stood up and announced a hijacking, according to the reports.

They were tackled by police and passengers and tied up with belts before the plane returned to the airport and landed safely. Several passengers and crew members were injured subduing the alleged hijackers, the state-run Xinhua news agency said.

A spokeswoman for Xinjiang"s government said six suspects are in custody, all of them members of the Uighur ethnic group, a Muslim Turkic minority.

The dramatic incident appears to be the latest sign of discontent in the resource-rich province where some Uighurs and members of other ethnic minority groups chafe at Beijing"s rule.

The event came on a day when state media trumpeted two significant events: President Hu Jintao"s arrival in Hong Kong to celebrate its 15th anniversary as a Chinese territory—after it was handed over by Britain in 1997—and the safe return to Earth of China"s first female astronaut after a 13-day space mission.

Witnesses on the plane distributed photos of the attempting hijacking to Chinese microblogs. One showed a man being subdued in an airline seat. It was unclear whether the six were armed, though a witness said in an Internet posting that one had boarded using a crutch and clutched a detonator-like device.

China"s Civil Aviation Administration said the plane was an Embraer 190, with 92 passengers and nine crew members. It was flying between Hetian and Urumqi, the provincial capital. The plane had returned to its destination within 16 minutes of takeoff, the regulator said.

While China"s air safety record is good, authorities have reported various near-misses in the airspace over Xinjiang, a region that has experienced multiple violent incidents that the government calls acts of terrorism.

Two years ago, two passengers aboard a plane in Xinjiang were detained on suspicion they lit a fire with toilet paper, state media said. A plane heading to Xinjiang from Afghanistan in 2009 was turned back after a bomb threat.

In a March 2008 incident with parallels to Friday"s events, Xinhua said passengers and crew foiled an attempt to destroy a plane by a female passenger who later admitted she had smuggled an unidentified "destructive device" onboard.

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