Thiruvananthapuram:
The SOS sounded by an Air India pilot at the Thiruvananthapuram airport last week, prompting a hijack scare, will be investigated by three different agencies.
The Kerala police, the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security, and the regulatory body for airlines, the DGCA will all study what prompted Captain Rupali Waghmare to hit the emergency button on Friday. In a complaint to the local police, she has said that a group of passengers "barricaded the aircraft and cockpit and did not allow anyone to enter or leave for five hours. Myself and my co-captain were separately threatened to be killed."
While the Kerala police will look at the circumvention of law and order, the DGCA will investigate whether the safety of passengers and the crew of the Air India flight was compromised. The Bureau of Civil Aviation Security will look at whether there was enough protection for the pilot and crew members, and whether the pilot over-reacted.
In a letter to the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security, the crew of the flight has shared its version of events - that a group of six passengers turned violent, and assaulted ground staff as well as some in-flight staff; the pilot was not allowed to leave the cockpit or use the restroom; the Central Industrial Security Force, which guards the airport, refused to act without written communication from the pilot. The crew says that Captain Waghmare then wrote a note and threw it down to the tarmac from the cockpit window. She made eight calls for help to the Air Traffic Control and finally transmitted an emergency code.
Sources in Air India say the report of the DGCA will be the most important and will determine whether the captain, who has over 15 years of experience, acted correctly.
The drama surrounding the incident could be extended by the possibility of all three inquiries leading to different conclusions. The Kerala Chief Minister has added a new plot point by blaming Air India. Yesterday, Oomen Chandy, who heads the state government said the airline's actions amounted to "sheer cruelty" and that "the hapless passengers were even dubbed as hijackers...this is deplorable and we express strong protest over it."
On Friday, there were nearly 150 passengers on board the Air India flight from Abu Dhabi to Kochi. Captain Waghmare had to divert the plane to Thiruvananthapuram because of fog. The flight landed there at 6:40 am. Nearly an hour later, she sounded an emergency. The passengers and pilot offer different versions of why.
Captain Waghmare has said in her police complaint that passengers "had overpowered the ground personnel and also assaulted the cabin crew to forcibly and unlawfully enter the flight deck and threaten me with death if we did not comply with their wishes and fly back to Cochin."
Sources in the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), the airline regulator, have confirmed that four people entered the cockpit, which is illegal. But other passengers say those reports are exaggerated. They claim that after they landed in Thiruvananthapuram, they were told that the crew's shift had ended and that a replacement crew would board the plane. This triggered worries about more delays. Passengers also say they were kept waiting on the plane without air-conditioning for several hours, while a committee of airport officials met to decide whether the hijack alert could be safely dismissed and the plane could take off.