False hijack alert at IGI airport

New Delhi: The IGI airport lived through some extremely tense moments last week when it suddenly got a hijack alert from an aircraft.
The alarming message beeped at the ATC tower and came on a frequency used by pilots to send a distress signal by silently pressing a switch without letting the hijacker know.
However, investigations revealed it was a false alarm that happened when a maintenance person had pressed that switch by mistake in the aircraft belonging to a domestic airliner.
Sources said that soon after getting the signal, the authorities started tracing from where it was being emitted and was traced to a plane parked at IGI.
"A team was immediately dispatched to the aircraft. That plane was under maintenance and some people were working there," said sources.
01/06/06 Saurabh Sinha/Times of India

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