City Reports

Jaipur: Plane hijack tweet creates panic, passenger quizzed

A passenger tweeted to Narendra Modi when his flight was diverted to Jaipur.

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March 1, 2018, 6:01 pm

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Jaipur Airport

Representative Image. Image Credit: Post Staff

Jaipur: A passenger in his mid-thirties created panic by tweeting to prime minister Narendra Modi that the plane he was flying in had possibly been hijacked. The Delhi-bound plane was diverted to Jaipur due to poor weather conditions, but the passenger Nitin Verma said the flight had been hijacked.

Even when he was assured by the airline on Twitter that the flight been delayed due to air traffic congestion at Delhi, he didn’t stop and continued to tweet about the possibility of hijack. He was apparently irritated over the fact that other flights were cleared to fly from Mumbai to Delhi, but his one was stuck at Jaipur.

Security agencies rounded up the passenger and quizzed him.

After the tweet was declared a hoax, the plane took off for Delhi.

There were 176 passengers on board.

The Jet Airways flight landed at the Jaipur International Airport around 2 pm after being diverted.

Nitin was flying to Delhi from Mumbai. As soon as the flight was diverted to Jaipur, he tweeted to Modi about the hijack.

@narendramodi sir we have been in jet airways flight for past 3 hrs , looks like hijacked, pl help 9W355,.

To this, Jet Airways responded, “Hi Nitin, our flight 9W 355 has been delayed due to air traffic congestion at Delhi.”

Ignoring the assurance, Nitin tweeted again “Can we get a confirmation with proper justification because other flights schedule after that got clearance from Mumbai to Delhi.

It created panic and the agencies including CISF and Air Traffic Control (ATC) were alerted.

The airport administration is likely to register a case against the man.

The flight took off to Delhi at 4 pm after getting clearance from security agencies.

A Jet Airways spokesperson later said a passenger tweeted a message involving security threat necessitating activation of the security protocol in a statement.

“The information was promptly shared with the concerned authorities including the CISF, and the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS) and local law enforcement agencies in line with Standard Operating Procedures,” he said.

First published: April 27, 2017
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