The crew on an IndiGo aircraft was alarmed after a piece of tissue paper was found with the word ‘Bomb’ written on it. The incident reportedly took place after the plane had landed, and airport officials followed all the necessary protocols before declaring the aircraft safe.
Bomb scare
IndiGo flight 6E379 is a scheduled service between Kolkata (CCU) and Bengaluru (BLR) with a scheduled departure at 05:40 and an arrival time of 08:15. The flight is generally operated by the carrier’s Airbus A320neo aircraft and takes a little over two hours.
On Sunday, IndiGo deployed an A321neo on the route, and the plane took off on schedule. It was a routine flight without any incident, but all that changed after it touched down at Bengaluru’s Kempegowda International Airport.
More than 200 passengers on the flight had deboarded, and one of the cabin crew members found a note behind a seat with the word bomb written on it. The New Indian Express quotes a source as saying,
“The airline received intimation about a bomb threat on board and then alerted security agencies. The empty aircraft was immediately isolated from the parking bay. Checks were carried out inside the aircraft when they came across the tissue paper with an open threat issued anonymously with the letters ‘BOMB’ (in English) in blue ink behind seat 6D.”
IndiGo files complaint
Authorities jumped into action, and a bomb squad was called to check the aircraft thoroughly. After passengers had disembarked, the empty plane was inspected by trained dogs and then completely sanitized.
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After following the standard operating procedures, the aircraft was given the all-clear. The investigation is ongoing, and one of the passengers is on the police radar. IndiGo approached the airport police station and filed a complaint which will be presented in the court today, and an FIR (first information report) will be filed under the specific sections as directed by the court.
The aircraft (VT-ILY, pictured above) flew several sectors after that and was performing a flight between Delhi (DEL) and Bengaluru (BLR) on November 28th at the time of writing.
Other incidents
There have been several bomb threats this year alone, with one of them taking place on another IndiGo flight in August. The Chennai-Dubai flight was delayed after the city police control room received an anonymous phone call about a bomb on the plane. It was later found to be a hoax.
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In October, a Mahan Air Airbus A340-600 en route from Tehran to Guangzhou was flying over India when the pilot contacted air traffic control to report the receiving of a bomb threat. The plane was offered to land in Jaipur, but the pilots decided to continue to Guangzhou.
In September, a passenger on a Singapore Airlines from San Francisco to Singapore made a bomb threat mid-air. Flight SQ 33 was already 12 hours into the nearly 17-hour journey by then. Things quickly became tense, and fighter jets from the Singapore Air Force escorted SQ 33 into Changi Airport.
The threat was a hoax, and the passenger eventually received a four-week sentence for assault, though charges related to the bomb threat were withdrawn.
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Source: The New Indian Express