Alliance Air Boeing 737 'hijack' drama revisited!

New Delhi: In one of the anxious moments for security personnel posted at IGI Airport here, a hijack alarm pressed by an Indigo airline pilot send everybody in tizzy.
The alarm was almost a re-run of 2001 incident when an Alliance Air Boeing 737 from Mumbai to Delhi was reportedly seized by two hijackers.
In both the cases, the crisis handling machinery of the Centre swung into action within minutes but then both the incidents ended in anti-climax manner.
While in today's case, flight operations were suspended for about 45 minutes after a couple of passengers onboard the Delhi-bound Indigo flight from Goa behaved"aggressively"and threatened to"hijack"the aircraft.
Pilots of some aircraft were asked to hover over the airspace before they got permission to land in view of the emergency landing of the Indigo plane.
Back in 2001, the alarm was sounded after an anonymous phone call to ATC in Ahmedabad and the confusion in the aircraft's cabin and cockpit.
In a literal comedy of errors, the pilots thought the hijackers were in the passenger cabin whereas the ATC thought they were in the cockpit.
01/02/09 Indopia.com

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Categories: Safety Feb 2009