Ex-pilot called himself messiah on climate-change mission, day before alleged hijack

A worker moves luggage trolleys outside Vancouver International Airport in Richmond, B.C., on Thursday, Dec. 31, 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck

The day before the suspected hijacking of a light aircraft triggered a security scare at Vancouver’s airport this week, former commercial pilot Shaheer Cassim posted on social media that he was a “messenger of Allah” sent to save humanity from climate change.

A 39-year-old man with the same name has now been charged with hijacking, constituting terrorism, over the incident on Tuesday that saw Norad scramble F-15 fighter jets before the Cessna safely landed.

A doctor registered in B.C. with the same surname as Cassim said the hijacking suspect had struggled with mental health issues for many years and had been “failed” by the mental health system.

• Read more: Man charged in alleged plane hijacking that disrupted YVR operations

The man was unwilling to comment on his relationship with the accused, and said questions about Cassim should be directed to Island Health.

RCMP said the suspect seized control of a Cessna at Victoria International Airport by threatening a flight instructor, before flying to Vancouver.

“Investigators have determined the suspect acted with an ideological motive to disrupt airspace,” said Sgt. Tammy Lobb in a statement late Wednesday.

Images posted on social media of the arrest of the Cessna’s pilot on the airport’s north runway show a bearded man who resembles Cassim, whose online posts include musings on religion, climate science, and advocacy for tolerance and peace.

He says “the Angel Gabriel appeared before me and gave me a message from Allah.”

“I am a messenger of Allah. I am the Messiah sent to save humanity from climate change and usher in an era of world peace,” Cassim said on Facebook on Monday.

His profile says Cassim attended high school in Lloydminster, Alta., before studying aviation at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology.

Cassim’s last post warns about “abrupt runaway global warming” that will cause humans to go extinct within a few years.

Cassim also says in the post that he is “Sam Carana,” who runs the “Arctic News” blog that describes itself as a place where contributors “all share a deep concern about the way climate change is unfolding in the Arctic and the threat that this poses for the world at large.”

It includes hundreds of posts since 2011, many of them highly technical, with the latest entry made on Saturday and titled: “Will humans go extinct soon?”

A Facebook account under Carana’s name has more than 4,000 followers.

The Arctic News blog lists more than 30 contributors, including prominent academics from universities in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom.

Peter D. Carter, who founded the environmental website Climate Emergency Institute in 2009, has interacted with Carana on social media.

“He’s a bit of a mystery,” said Carter, who lives in Victoria, adding that he had never met Carana in person.

Carter is listed as a contributor on Arctic News but he denied contributing.

That someone might hijack a plane in the name of climate change was “absolutely absurd,” Carter said, although he hoped people could see past this for the urgent need to address the issue.

“Our problem is that there’s next to no interest in climate change out there,” Carter said. “Over the years, recent years, the public interest in climate change has been dropping, dropping, and dropping.”

Stanford University Prof. Mark Z. Jacobson, who researches global warming and its solutions, is also listed as an Arctic News contributor. He said in an e-mail that Carana contacted him sporadically between 2013 and 2018 on climate issues, and in 2020 wrote “one four-word comment on a post I posted on Facebook,” Jacobson said.

“Otherwise, I can’t find any other communication with him.”

He also said he had never met Carana.

In 2012, Cassim held a news conference before going on a cross-country bicycle ride to raise awareness for global warming.

His Facebook profile says he was employed from 2008 to 2010 by now-defunct KD Air, a small airline based on Vancouver Island.

The airline’s former owners, Diana and Lars Banke, said in an interview on Wednesday that Cassim was one of the smartest and best pilots they ever worked with, calling him a fast learner who was highly intelligent.

But Lars Banke said Cassim left the airline after getting “bored” and then went to medical school. He also said Cassim believed the world was coming to an end.

Diana Banke said she was “very surprised” to hear of Cassim’s charges, saying he was quite young when he worked for them and was “like a kid.”

“Something would (have to) be going on that’s not normal,” Lars Banke said. “He was, I would say, a caring person.”

Diana Banke said she remembered Cassim “doing a really long bicycle trek,” and that he brought a dog along with him.

Lars Banke said he recalled that Cassim was somewhat interested in environmentalism, but he was unaware of any kind of religious beliefs.

“He never spoke religion with us,” Diana Banke said.

“I’m really surprised that he would’ve done something like this,” she added.

B.C. Premier David Eby said when asked about the incident on Thursday that it was a “bizarre moment,” and the fact that it ended without a more significant disruption at the airport is a “testament” to the skill of responders who talked the suspect down.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 17, 2025.