BENGALURU: Half an hour into the flight, a passenger found a piece of paper in a toilet. It said the aircraft would be hijacked. Within two hours, the plane carrying 178 passengers was back where it took off from.
IndiGo flight 6E 451 left Bengaluru for Lucknow at about 5:50 pm on Saturday. Roughly 30 minutes later a passenger found the note and alerted the cabin crew.
The aircraft turned back to Bengaluru. A full emergency was declared at Terminal 1. Security agencies isolated the plane and searched it under standard procedure.
"We declared it a hoax after a thorough search lasting 90 minutes," a senior police officer said.
The flight completed its journey later on Saturday night.
An investigation is under way to identify who wrote the note. No arrest had been reported when this report was filed.
Such threats are not new at Indian airports. Each one triggers the same drill — isolating the aircraft, re-screening passengers and bags, and a delayed departure. In most cases the threat turns out to be false, but the drill cannot be skipped.
What did it mean for the passengers? They were not told at the airport why their flight had been late. The evening plans of 178 people were rewritten by a scrap of paper.
Whether IndiGo issued a separate statement on the incident was not clear when this report was filed. More details are expected from airport authorities and the police.
The next steps in the probe are obvious enough: the handwriting on the note, the list of passengers who used the toilets, and the CCTV footage.