A Mumbai-bound Air India flight carrying 105 passengers was moved to an isolation bay at Kolkata airport on Wednesday morning after cabin crew found the words “hijack alert” written on a lavatory mirror.
The aircraft, an A320 registered VT-TNH operating as flight AI 772, had not taken off when the writing was discovered at around 10.30 a.m., airport officials said in a report carried by the Daily Mirror and credited to the Hindustan Times.
An airport police officer said the message appeared to have been written “possibly with lipstick”.
The response
Standard anti-hijacking protocol was followed. Security personnel, the fire brigade and a bomb squad were deployed, the aircraft was taken to the isolation bay and passengers were taken off.
A search ran until about 1.30 p.m., covering passenger luggage. Investigators questioned passengers about their movements and anything they had observed. No suspicious item was found.
“Necessary checks are currently underway by the concerned agencies as per established protocols,” the airport said.
Context
An isolation bay is a remote stand set aside at airports for aircraft subject to a security threat, keeping them away from terminals and other traffic while they are searched. Moving an aircraft there is an automatic step once a hijack-related threat is reported, regardless of how credible it appears — the assessment comes after the aircraft is secured, not before.
Not reported
The report does not say whether the flight eventually departed, how long passengers were delayed, or whether they were rebooked. It does not say whether anyone has been identified or detained over the writing, whether CCTV or the passenger manifest has produced a lead, or what charge such an act would attract. The flight number appears in the filing in two forms, AI 772 and AI 2772, without the discrepancy being resolved.
Single source. This reaches us as a Daily Mirror item credited to the Hindustan Times, which is not among this desk’s verified newsrooms. The BBC, Reuters, Al Jazeera, The Hindu, NDTV and the Indian Express are all unreachable to our search tooling, so no independent verification of the Indian reporting was possible.
