New Delhi: It is now being alleged that some pilots began a misinformation campaign about an incident on an Air India flight earlier this month, creating a hijack scare.
This is what happened: A passenger fell sick on an Air India London flight on the 17th of this month. His name is Karim. The captain of the flight paged for any doctors on board. An NRI called Pankaj Singh responded to this call, alongwith a nurse. This nurse is an Indian national named Naval Prabha. The two medics began attending to the patient who was losing pulse. The doctor, Pankaj, began a dialogue with the captain of this flight about the possibility of diversion of the aircraft while simultaneously administering oxygen to the patient. The patient felt better after some time and no flight diversion was needed ultimately. The matter was solved satisafactorily. This is the version of a very senior Air India official who has examined the report made by the cabin crew and cockpit crew of this flight.
A whatsapp message chain allegedly started within the pilot community got almost all the facts wrong. Two national newspapers - The Times of India and the Hindustan Times - also carried stories based on the version of this WhatsApp message this morning. The WhatsApp message says that one passenger complained of a medical problem on a London flight, a doctor was paged for and five people volunteered. They all checked the patient and "demanded to see the captain asap"
"Their persistence was suspect so the captain, through the cabin crew, refused to meet the 'doctors' either inside or outside the cockpit," the Whatsapp message says adding they were all Pakistani passport holders and all their contact numbers were fake. The message goes on to warn pilots, saying "if you do unlock the cockpit door, then you do that at a grave risk. This appears to be a dry run by the desperadoes".
But according to the report filed by the cockpit and cabin crew of this flight, we have already seen that two and not five people responded to the captain's call for medics and neither was a Pakistani national.
28/03/15 Sindhu Bhattacharya/First Post
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This is what happened: A passenger fell sick on an Air India London flight on the 17th of this month. His name is Karim. The captain of the flight paged for any doctors on board. An NRI called Pankaj Singh responded to this call, alongwith a nurse. This nurse is an Indian national named Naval Prabha. The two medics began attending to the patient who was losing pulse. The doctor, Pankaj, began a dialogue with the captain of this flight about the possibility of diversion of the aircraft while simultaneously administering oxygen to the patient. The patient felt better after some time and no flight diversion was needed ultimately. The matter was solved satisafactorily. This is the version of a very senior Air India official who has examined the report made by the cabin crew and cockpit crew of this flight.
A whatsapp message chain allegedly started within the pilot community got almost all the facts wrong. Two national newspapers - The Times of India and the Hindustan Times - also carried stories based on the version of this WhatsApp message this morning. The WhatsApp message says that one passenger complained of a medical problem on a London flight, a doctor was paged for and five people volunteered. They all checked the patient and "demanded to see the captain asap"
"Their persistence was suspect so the captain, through the cabin crew, refused to meet the 'doctors' either inside or outside the cockpit," the Whatsapp message says adding they were all Pakistani passport holders and all their contact numbers were fake. The message goes on to warn pilots, saying "if you do unlock the cockpit door, then you do that at a grave risk. This appears to be a dry run by the desperadoes".
But according to the report filed by the cockpit and cabin crew of this flight, we have already seen that two and not five people responded to the captain's call for medics and neither was a Pakistani national.
28/03/15 Sindhu Bhattacharya/First Post
