Selfies with alleged hijacker just a ploy to help authorities, says pilot

There was a method to their madness, after all.

A stewardess and a British man who took selfies with the alleged hijacker of an EgyptAir flight on Tuesday didn't do it just for fun. The snaps were immediately sent via WhatsApp to authorities so they could see who and what they were dealing with during the tense ordeal.

The co-pilot of the Airbus A320 told Newsweek the stewardess asked to have her photo taken with 59-year-old Seif Eddin Mustafa, even as he threatened to blow up the plane while wearing a fake suicide bomb belt.

"I was sending everything back to Cairo and sending everything to Cyprus via WhatsApp. So I was just taking pictures of him. One of the air hostesses took a picture with him," pilot Hamad el Kaddah told the magazine.

"She took the picture but we were lying to him, like 'oh right, can I have a picture with you?' So we can have how he looks, what he is wearing. We did this, then we took it. Her name is Naira. She did this trick."