NEW DELHI: A bomb threat for an Air India flight departing to Mumbai on Friday morning was received inside another aircraft that had just arrived at the Delhi airport earlier in the day. The threat was later confirmed to be a hoax. This is the second bomb threat received by an Air India flight within a week.
Flight AI 2954, an A320 Neo, which left Mumbai at 2.41 am, reached Terminal 3 of Indira Gandhi International Airport at 4.41 am, according to flight tracker website, FlightStats.
An airport source told this reporter, “Flight AI 2954 had just arrived from Mumbai to Delhi and the passengers had all alighted. A cabin crew member who went to the washroom found a note on the tissue paper inside it. It warned of a bomb threat on a subsequent flight departing to Mumbai the same day, AI 2945.”
AI 2945 had a scheduled departure time of 11.40 am. “As soon as the airline passed on the message to the airport, the fire service squad reached the plane. The Bomb Squad and the Dog Squad of the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) and other agencies rushed to the spot. After intense checks, it was declared as a non-specific threat (hoax),” the source added. The flight finally departed 40 minutes later.
The incident caused some anxious moments at the airport, said another source.
Air India, in a statement, said, “A non-specific security alert was detected on one of our aircraft. Standard security procedures were fully carried out and the aircraft has been cleared for the next flight. Air India accords top priority to the safety and security of its passengers and crews.”
The airline refused to divulge further details.
In a previous incident on 22 June, an Air India Dreamliner flight to Delhi from Birmingham (AI 114) received a bomb threat mid-air and had to be diverted to Riyadh as a precautionary measure. Intensive checks were carried out at King Khalid International Airport after deplaning all the passengers, and it turned out to be a hoax.