Bomb scare fails to stop flight

A Kolkata-bound Air Deccan flight was allowed to take off from Port Blair with 130 passengers on Tuesday morning despite an anonymous call claiming a bomb was present on the plane.

Though the call was received at NSCBI fire station at 9.30 am, air traffic controllers failed to alert the captain of flight DN 698.

The plane, which was in the bay at the time, received clearance for takeoff procedure and was airborne at 9.58 am, nearly half-an-hour after the call.

"By the time the Port Blair ATC was notified, the plane had already taken off,"said Airports Authority of India's regional executive director SPS Bakshi, acknowledging the inordinate delay in relaying a message of utmost urgency.

Even more intriguing, the aircraft did not return to Port Blair. Instead, the pilot felt it prudent to make the two-hour journey over Bay of Bengal, putting 136 lives, including his own, at risk.

Safety protocol requires a bomb scare to be treated seriously at all times. A grounded aircraft has to be thoroughly checked by the bomb detection squad.

The flight can take off only after the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS) and the DGCA clear it. If the plane is airborne at the time of the scare call, the pilot has to land at the earliest possible opportunity to minimise the risk.

On Tuesday, all rules were flouted. The plane took off after the scare call. And continued to fly for two hours. "The sequence of events is incomprehensible.

If the bomb scare was at 9.30 pm, Port Blair should have been alerted immediately and takeoff suspended. Even if the plane was airborne by the time the alert was sounded, the plane should have returned there,"said former Indian captain S L Bagchi.

The only way the pilot's action could be justified, Bagchi reasoned, was if he had learnt of the bomb scare midway through.

Bakshi, though, admitted that there were several anomalies and ordered a probe in the evening. "BCAS and AAI's security officials are going through the tape transcripts. Perhaps, the bomb scare call was too fuzzy and took a while to decipher,"he told TOI.

For the record, the call turned out to be a hoax. NSCBI was put on emergency mode and the plane allowed priority landing on arrival.

THE TIMES OF INDIA