Plane on test ride hits hijack button

A hijack scare kept the air traffic controllers in Mumbai on tenterhooks for three days in a row. Airport sources told DNA that the first hijack alarm coded message was received at the control tower on Friday afternoon.

The aircraft, belonging to King Air, was once owned by Maharashtra government, they added.

“More than a dozen aircraft were flying in Mumbai airspace when the control room received the hijack code message,” said a senior AAI official on condition of anonymity.

“Within seconds all the agencies were informed about it as per protocol, and we all started looking for the aircraft.” The sequence of every aircraft approaching Mumbai was changed.

“All of us were really scared because we thought that an aircraft had been hijacked and our first job was to locate it,” said an air traffic controller, who too refused to divulge his name. But before the controllers could tune in their equipment, the message stopped abruptly, triggering panic that the worst had happened. “Throughout the night we kept checking information, trying to ensure whether any aircraft had been hijacked. There was none and we heaved sigh of relief,” added the controller.

But there was more to the drama. On Saturday afternoon, the control tower again received the hijack code message from an aircraft. “This time we acted even faster and traced the aircraft somewhere near Juhu airport,” said another senior airport official. The control room in Juhu airport was alerted but officials there could do nothing as they had no radar to track down aircraft.

On Sunday afternoon, Mumbai control again received the hijack message, again from a plane located somewhere near Juhu airport. This time, the authorities were even more alert and found out that a King Air plane was being checked by a foreign pilot and an aircraft engineer. “They were asked to switch off all gadgets, and the hijack message disappeared,” said the official.

The foreign pilot and aircraft engineer told airport authorities that while testing the gadgets, they might have erred and press the transponder, which flashes hijack message code.