SAINT PETERSBURG -- A Russian man threatened to blow up a Turkish Airlines jet on Wednesday but passengers said they were unaware of any alert until the plane landed and was surrounded by armed police.

The man, who demanded the flight from the Turkish resort of Antalya to Saint Petersburg be taken to Strasbourg in France, was arrested after the plane reached its destination.

The would-be hijacker, in his early 50s, made the demand in a note to the pilot of the Airbus A-320, which was carrying tourists returning from the Mediterranean resort, said Yekaterina Mirishova, a spokeswoman for regional prosecutors in Saint Petersburg.

"He threatened to blow up the plane if his demand was not met," she told AFP.

Passengers meanwhile denied reports the man was drunk and had been overpowered in the cabin by fellow travelers. "The whole flight was calm," said one passenger, Oleg Kiselyov.

"When we landed they asked us to stay in our seats. People in uniforms, who were probably from the airline, and one of the pilots, came up to a passenger sitting near me," he said.

"They spoke to him about something and took him away. Everything was calm. He did not resist, did not scream and said nothing."

Other passengers said nothing appeared to be wrong until they landed, when they saw armed police near the plane and began getting worried telephone calls on their mobile phones from relatives.

"They asked us to stay in our seats and we looked out windows and saw police with automatic weapons. Then we got scared," said Alexandra, a passenger who declined to give her last name.

It was unclear why the alleged hijacker wanted to go to Strasbourg, home to the European Court of Human Rights, which has issued numerous judgments against Russia in recent years.

Mirishova, the prosecutors' spokeswoman, did not name the man but said he had been born in Russia's Volgograd region in 1956, contradicting a statement by a Turkish official that he was an Uzbek national.

The man did not have explosives, prosecutor Alexander Bebenin said, adding investigators were still seeking to determine whether he was drunk.

Kiselyov said the man did not appear intoxicated: "He didn't look drunk, but he looked different from the other tourists because he looked very focused," the passenger said.

Earlier, Turkish officials said the man had been inebriated and was subdued by other passengers after approaching the cockpit.

"The passenger claimed to have a bomb and wanted to divert the plane to a destination of his choice... The person was subdued and put under control," the head of Turkey's airports management authority, Orhan Birdal, said on CNN Turk television.

Birdal added the incident occurred over Belarussian airspace.

Turkish Airlines director Temel Kotil told Anatolia news agency the offender handed a flight attendant a note saying he had a bomb.

"The man then attempted to walk towards the cockpit... and was overpowered by passengers," Kotil said.

A senior official at Turkey's transport ministry identified the man as Yasa Rashidov, an Uzbek national, and said he had "exhibited rowdy behavior during the flight because he was heavily intoxicated," Anatolia reported.

There were 164 passengers on board, Turkish Airlines said.

Turkey is a popular destination for Russian tourists, and heavy drinking is common among Russian plane passengers going on holiday.

In March, a Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt to Kiev made an unscheduled landing in Poland after a Russian passenger, apparently drunk, began shouting that he was a terrorist.