A man was restrained and placed into plastic wrist restraints Wednesday aboard a commercial flight to Honolulu.

Flight attendants became concerned when the man became agitated aboard the flight from Phoenix, said FBI Special Agent Tom Simon in Honolulu. They asked for assistance, and two off-duty New Jersey police officers placed wrist restraints on the man, Simon said.

State sheriff deputies met the plane at Honolulu Airport before it arrived at the gate, and removed the man, which is the normal procedure, said Toni Schwartz, state Department of Public Safety spokeswoman. She said sheriff deputies held the man, of unknown age, for federal authorities and did not open a criminal case. He was later released.

US Airways Flight 20 lasted six hours and seven minutes and landed in Honolulu at 2:25 p.m., five minutes ahead of schedule, according to flightaware.com, a plane-tracking website.

A US Airways spokesman referred questions about the incident to law enforcement.

While local authorities described the incident as routine, media in New Jersey described a dramatic event with a shirtless man shouting about a gun and two New Jersey police officers tackling him as he ran toward the cockpit.

According to the Jersey Journal, about two hours before landing in Honolulu, the man started having a panic attack and said he had to get off the plane, despite being about 40,000 feet in the air. The paper spoke with a Jersey City police lieutenant who had spoken with one of the officers on board the flight.

According to the paper, the lead flight attendant told the other attendants to block the exits after the man threatened to get off the plane. The man then took off his sweater and began waving his hands in the air and yelling, "He’s got a gun. Who’s gonna shoot me?"

He bolted toward the cockpit, the lead flight attendant shouted, "Stop him," and the two New Jersey officers and two other passengers tackled the man at the front of the plane, the paper said. One of the cops cuffed the man with plastic wrist restraints given to him by a flight attendant and brought the man to the back of the plane.

Simon, with the FBI, said the incident was "very routine, nothing unusual" and that the man was apparently experiencing withdrawal symptoms.

A source, speaking anonymously because of medical privacy issues, said the man was experiencing alcohol withdrawal.

"The guy didn’t do anything illegal," Simon said. "The FBI declined to investigate further."

He said generally a person who isn’t trying to do something illegal or assault anyone on a plane won’t be arrested.