SEOUL – South Korea’s top carrier Korean Air said its staff followed company procedure in restraining an unruly passenger after 80s pop singer Richard Marx tweeted that he helped the “ill-trained” crew handle the situation.

Marx said he and his wife were flying from the Vietnamese capital Hanoi to Incheon airport, the South’s main hub, when a passenger started physically attacking another passenger sitting next to him and the crew members.

“Passenger next to us attacked passengers and crew. Crew completely ill trained,” Marx said on Twitter, posting a series of photos showing him trying to hold down the unruly passenger.

The pictures – taken by Marx’s wife, TV host and model Daisy Fuentes and posted on their Twitter and Facebook pages – show the male passenger apparently grabbing a female flight attendant by her hair and another crew member pointing a taser gun.

Fuentes said the all-female crew members did not know how to use the taser nor how to secure the rope around the man and “never fully got control of him”.

Marx said the fiasco lasted four hours until he stepped in along with other male passengers and tied him down with a rope.

The passenger was turned over to police upon arrival at Incheon and later charged with violation of aviation security laws and assault.

“Korean Air should be sanctioned for not knowing how to handle a situation like this without passenger interference,” Marx said on his Facebook.

Korean Air spokesman Sung Suk-Jae said the crew members all received safety instruction and were acting “according to protocol”.

“They took measures that were most appropriate to the situation,” he said.

Sung acknowledged the crew members received help from other passengers and added that the case would be further investigated.