Story here.
“An Australian aboard a plane intercepted by fighter jets in Singapore says the dramatic incident was the result of lies told by someone in Thailand angry at being denied a bribe.”
Sounds about par for the course.
Not that I don´t think is well within the realm of possibility (about the bribe), but this sounds fishy:
It doesn´t make any sense at all, to begin with because Singapore is a pretty long way from Koh Samui; then, if you´re having problems with the plane you don´t divert to a far airport, you divert to the nearest one. Finally, if he had a flight plan for the Samui test flight then, it follows, that at the moment of departure the trip to Singapore wasn´t part of that flight plan.
There’s usually more than meets the eye with matters like this over here. But it said he was flying from Koh Samui to Australia. Singapore could have been along the flight path, especially if it was Perth he was heading for.
But I can well imagine that whatever the Aussie pilot was up to, a disgruntled Thai official who was cheated out of a juicy bribe might do something like this.