The woman who allegedly injured three people during a hijacking of a flight south from Blenheim has been committed for trial.
Asha Ali Abdille was remanded in custody to a pre-trial conference in the High Court at Christchurch on February 13, when the trial date may be set.
The 34-year-old Somali woman, faces a charge of hijacking, taking an offensive weapon onto an aircraft, and four charges of wounding or injuring with reckless disregard for safety.
The depositions hearing in front of John O'Hara and Bruce Dawson, Justices of the Peace, heard the evidence of the last of the witnesses today, and there were no witnesses called by her defence counsel.
A police officer on the scene at Christchurch Airport, Constable Nigel Barton, told the court that he arrived at the aircraft as the stairs at the back of the plane were lowered.
He said the passengers walked off the plane and then started running. They were told to stop and lie down on the grass. He helped the pilot by putting a towel around his injured hand until ambulance staff arrived.
When the armed offenders squad members escorted Abdille away from the plane they handcuffed her and made her kneel down. They found a knife in her shoe and Mr Barton did a pat-down search of her.
In the car on the way out of the airport Abdille told Mr Barton that she went easy on the pilot. She said: "He wouldn't listen to me. I should have killed the pilot earlier, I should have stabbed him. I am pregnant three months.
"The pilot kicked me six or seven times. I let him survive because of the other passengers." On cross-examination by defence counsel Antony Shaw, Mr Barton admitted it was unusual for a policeman to pat-down a woman, but he felt the situation was unique.
There was no policewoman present and he did it to make sure there was nothing there to endanger the accused, the officers, or himself, he said.
The officer in charge of the scene, Detective Donald Rayne, said he first noticed a trail of blood from the steps of the plane across the tarmac.
He found a black handled knife with what appeared to be blood on it and then another steak knife on the floor in front of seat 1A.
There were several areas and seats in the plane with bloodstains on them, including the cockpit area, and on documents used by the pilots, he said.
Mr Rayne was asked by defence counsel Greg Gimblett where the contents of the cockpit voice recording device were, and he said he could not answer that question.
He confirmed that he had allowed the voice recorder to pass out of police custody when they finished their scene examination of the plane.
