For 45 desperate seconds, crew and passengers on QF1737 fought for their lives yesterday, overpowering an armed man who police said tried to hijack and crash the aircraft with 53 people on board.

Brandishing two 15cm sharpened wooden stakes as knives, the 40-year-old assailant stabbed two flight attendants who stopped him forcing his way into the cockpit of the Boeing 717 - 20 minutes after take-off from Melbourne's Tullamarine Airport. Five passengers came to their assistance, forcing the man to the floor and disarming him.

Police recovered an aerosol can and a cigarette lighter. They suspect the assailant intended to use them as a flame-thrower to disable the pilots once he got into the cockpit.

A major review of airport security began immediately and the Deputy Prime Minister, John Anderson - who said it was "an attempt to crash the plane" - demanded officials find out how the man smuggled the weapons through airport checks before boarding the plane, which was bound for Launceston.

Government sources said the assailant called out about "God's will or Armageddon when he was interrogated by federal police after the plane returned to Melbourne. He had been quiet but one source said that, during the attack and after he had been detained, he began talking about "God and the end of the world", saying that "God had spoken to him".

Mr Anderson said the metal detectors at the airport would not have picked up the man's wooden stakes.

Witnesses who saw the man after he was arrested, his hands bloodied and in handcuffs, described him as "just a normal looking Australian". It was believed he recently had resigned or been sacked from a job. Federal police said he would be charged under the Federal Aviation Act.

"We believe he was trying to take over the plane," said Federal Police agent Stephen Cato.

Qantas chief executive Geoff Dixon said: "We do not believe at this stage that this is terrorist-related in any way."

He said the aircraft did not have one of the new "enhanced" security doors which are being installed on all Qantas planes but the cockpit door was locked.

Passengers said the hero of QF1737, which took off at 2.50pm, was the purser, Greg Khan, 38, who for 10 dangerous seconds stood between the cockpit door and the man's frenzied assault.

He was stabbed in the head and face as he fought the assailant back down the aisle, where five passengers helped subdue the man. A 25-year-old female flight attendant was also stabbed in the cheek. Keith Charlton, 59, one of the passengers who disarmed the man, said the desperate fight lasted no more than 45 seconds.

"I didn't hear him utter one word," Mr Charlton said.

"If there ever was a hero, it was Greg," said Mr Charlton. "He saved the aircraft."

Mr Charlton, from Rosebud, Victoria, was sitting in row three when he "heard a commotion behind me. I turned and this guy came rushing past, waving what looked like a wooden dagger high in the air. He charged onto the purser and began stabbing him."

But Mr Khan did not go down. Instead, with blood pouring from his wounds, he buried his head into the assailant's chest and forced him back down the aisle.

"The guy was stabbing him, there was blood going everywhere, but the purser wouldn't let go, he kept fighting him back," Mr Charlton said.

The passengers and a female flight attendant came to his assistance, overpowering the man and forcing him to the floor. "The first to help him was a passenger sitting in the front row," Mr Charlton said. "I learned later it was his brother-in-law. We got the guy down, we took the wooden stakes from him. We stood on him."

Mr Charlton said the crew got plastic restraints. They bound the assailant's legs and hands. "We picked him up and threw him on the floor between two rows of seats," he said. "Someone sat on the seat with his feet on him. I was leaning over the back of the seat in front, watching him."

One passenger injured his arm in the melee, but Mr Charlton said no one had time to feel fear. "It happened so quickly, we had to subdue him, there was no thought of anything else. But later we got very angry at what he'd tried to do."

Mr Anderson said that while Australia had "world's best practice" in airport security, "it may well be that there are lessons to be learn out of this".