Probe ordered into mid-air hijack alarm

Jul 09, 2012 - Sridhar Kumaraswami |

Age Correspondent

New Delhi

Civil aviation authorities on Sunday ordered a probe after an anti-hijack alarm went off mid-air on a commercial flight of a scheduled Indian carrier from Bengaluru to Delhi on Sunday.
Sources confirmed that the Chennai Air Traffic Control (ATC) — under whose purview Bengaluru falls — received the anti-hijack alarm.
The pilot was frantically contacted but replied that there was no such incident on board. Triggering of an anti-hijack alarm is viewed as an extremely serious occurrence and authorities will probe why the alarm went off. “An inquiry will be conducted,” top sources confirmed to this newspaper.
Authorities did not identify the airline whose aircraft it was but there are indications it could belong to a low cost carrier.
As per procedure, the pilots can press three separate transponder codes for different contingencies. One code is pressed in case of “unlawful interference” in the operation of the aircraft which, basically, means hijacking. The second code is pressed in case of loss of communication between the aircraft and authorities on ground while the third code is pressed for a situation of emergency on board.
“The probe will look into whether the code was pressed accidentally by the pilot or whether there was a malfunction in the system,” sources said.
“There was just a momentary indication transmitted to the Chennai ATC that the anti-hijack alarm had been triggered,” sources said.
The inquiry will be conducted by civil aviation authorities with the participation of the state-run Airports Authority of India, under whose purview the ATC functions. The Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS) is also likely to seek a report on the incident.
After the hijack of an aircraft of the erstwhile Indian Airlines to the Afghan city of Kandahar from the Nepalese Capital Kathmandu in 1999, Indian civil aviation authorities have formulated elaborate contingency procedures to deal with such a situation. Security has also been extremely tight at Indian airports to prevent such a situation.

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