Hijack was just a comedy of errors

[Guest guest]

Hijack was just a comedy of errors

 

A comedy of errors kept the nation awake last night. Early

Thursday, the government and bureaucracy were on tenterhooks

over news that a Mumbai-Delhi Air Alliance Boeing 737 flight was

hijacked over Ahmedabad.

 

Four hours later, the Union Minister of Civil Aviation, Shahnawaz

Hussain, announced that the 'hijack' was a "false alarm", and

blamed "miscommunication" for the drama.

 

The drama began after the Alliance Air Boeing 737 flight left

Mumbai for Delhi at 11.15 pm on Wednesday. At 12.15 p.m., a

passenger made a distress call, saying that the plane was

hijacked.

 

Panic followed on the ground. Hussain announced the flight was

hijacked over Ahmedabad, quoting the air traffic control in New

Delhi where the plane landed around 1 am.

 

National Security Guard commandoes surrounded the plane, as

passengers in the plane with mobile phones called up their

families. Relatives of passengers on board rushed to the airport

on hearing the news from television networks.

 

The number of passengers on the flight (No. CD7444) was put

at 46 and crew six. The hijackers were said to number two.

 

The government's crisis management group assembled under

the chairmanship of Home Minister L.K. Advani at 2.15 am. About

4 a.m., Hussain emerged from the meeting and informed

reporters that there had been no hijack.

 

He said there had been a mis-communication between the air

traffic controller at Ahmedabad and the pilot of the flight CD 7444

of Alliance Air, a subsidiary of Indian Airlines.

 

The Ahmedabad ATC had received an anonymous call that the

flight would be hijacked. The ATC informed Captain Ashwani

Bahal that the flight had been hijacked.

 

The pilot locked the cockpit believing that the hijackers were in

the passenger cabin. "The people in the passenger area thought

the hijackers were inside the cockpit while the pilot thought they

were outside," the minister explained.

 

The pilot brought the plane to Delhi and parked it at an isolated

bay where it was surrounded by National Security Guard

commandos who eventually deflated the aircraft tyre and

stormed it after three hours to find no hijackers.

 

Hussain denied that the entire drama had been a

mockk-exercise and promised to take action against those

responsible for the drama.