A drunk man sparked a hijack alert on a Turkish Airlines plane on Wednesday after passing a note to the pilot saying he had a bomb, the airline said.

Turkish Airlines chief executive Temel Kotil told a news conference the passenger was drunk and had been swiftly brought under control.

Passengers on the aircraft, which had taken off from the Turkish resort of Antalya bound for St Petersburg in Russia, disarmed the man, a spokeswoman for Turkey's main airport operator TAV said. No bomb or weapon was found on him.

The Turkish Airlines plane, carrying 164 passengers -- mostly Russian tourists -- and 7 crew, landed safely in St Petersburg.

"The hijacker gave a note to the head steward saying he had a bomb. After that the captain and crew acted in accordance with civil aviation procedure," Kotil said.

"Nobody was injured and the hijacker was taken into custody," he added.

The head of Turkey's civil aviation authority, Ali Ariduru, said the would-be hijacker was believed to be of Uzbek origin, but this had not been confirmed.

"It is said that he was drunk and that he had carried out this act under the influence of alcohol," Ariduru was quoted as saying by state-run Anatolian news agency.

Russia's RIA news agency, citing the press office of transport police in the St Petersburg region, also said that their initial information was that he was from Uzbekistan.

Hijackings are common in Turkey, where a number of radical groups ranging from Kurdish separatists to far-left militants operate, and several incidents in the past two years have ended without casualties.

Late last year two men hijacked a Turkish airliner heading for Istanbul from northern Cyprus, but gave themselves up and released their hostages after forcing the plane to land in southern Turkey.