India’s IndiGo flight makes emergency landing in Nagpur after bomb threat
An IndiGo flight travelling from Oman’s Muscat to New Delhi made an emergency landing in Nagpur city of India’s Maharashtra state on Tuesday after receiving a bomb threat, according to Indian media.
The flight left India’s Kochi city, where it had a layover, for the Delhi airport carrying 157 passengers and six crew members at 9:31am IST (9:01am PKT). The Cochin International Airport Ltd. (CIAL) said the threat was received on its official email address, Press Trust of India reported.
All passengers of the IndiGo flight had been safely disembarked, according to Nagpur Deputy Commissioner of Police Lohit Matani.
While an investigation was underway, preliminary checks did not find anything suspicious, officials said.
After the bomb threat was received by the CIAL airport, a Bomb Threat Assessment Committee (BTAC) was convened and the threat was declared as “specific”.
As per ANI, a similar incident happened on Monday, where a Lufthansa flight LH752 scheduled to fly from Frankfurt to India’s Hyderabad, was forced to return to Germany after a bomb threat was received through an email at Hyderabad airport at 6:01pm IST (5:31pm PKT) on June 15.
A committee was formed to assess the threat as per the standard operating procedure.
On June 13, an Air India flight AI 379 flying from Phuket to New Delhi with 156 passengers on board also received a bomb threat and was forced to land back in the southern Thai island after making a wide loop around the Andaman Sea.
The incident followed the crash on an Air India flight in Ahmedabad on June 12, shortly after takeoff, killing at least 271 people, including nearly 30 people on the ground.
Bomb threat diverts plane of Haj pilgrims within Indonesia
Separately, a plane carrying hundreds of Haj pilgrims back from Saudi Arabia was diverted in Indonesia today after an email bomb threat was sent to authorities, Indonesia’s aviation body said.
The Directorate General of Civil Aviation said it received a report from Indonesia’s airport operator “regarding a bomb threat sent by an unidentified person via electronic mail”.
The email at 7:30am (5:30am PKT) contained a threat to “blow up” Saudia Airlines flight SV 5276, which was flying from Jeddah to the Indonesian capital Jakarta, it said in a statement.
After 10am (8am PKT) the pilot diverted the plane from its destination of Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta International Airport to Kualanamu International Airport in Medan, a city on Sumatra island in western Indonesia.
The flight was carrying 442 Haj pilgrims, including 207 men and 235 women, it added.
“Upon identifying security and safety threats, the pilot decided to divert the landing to the nearest airport,” said InJourney Airports, Indonesia’s airport operator.
A transport ministry official told AFP the plane was still in Medan, and Flightradar24 showed the plane there.
The airport evacuated the pilgrims, and a bomb disposal unit swept the plane for explosive devices, the aviation body said in its statement.