‘Bomb Blast @30 Minutes’ message halts Delhi IndiGo flight on the runway

May 28, 2024 9:19 am

New Delhi: A IndiGo flight from Delhi airport was evacuated and searched by authorities after the pilot found a tissue with the words “Bomb Blast @30 Minutes” in the aircrafts washroom.

After the aircraft was isolated and searched, officials found nothing and deemed it a hoax, says NDTV.

Flight 6E2211 was scheduled to take off from Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport around 5 am to Varanasi carrying 176 passengers, all of whom were safely evacuated from emergency slides, officials said.

“At 05:40 am, a phone call was received from the IGI airport regarding a bomb threat. A message ‘BOMB BLAST @30 MINUTES’ was written on a piece of paper inside the lavatory of the flight and was found by the pilot,” a Delhi Fire Services official said.

The IndiGo also released an official statement and said that an alternate aircraft was arranged for passengers from Delhi to Varanasi.

“The passengers were provided with refreshments and were boarded. The flight departed for Varanasi at 11:10 am. We regret the inconvenience caused to the passengers,” the airline said.

Earlier this month, a tissue paper with the word ‘bomb’ written on it was also found on an Air India flight lavatory at Delhi airport, but it had turned out to be a hoax.

Delhi police had said that they received information regarding a tissue paper found in the lavatory of an Air India flight scheduled to depart for Vadodara on May 15, with the word ‘bomb’ written on it.

“Following standard security protocols, a thorough inspection was conducted, and no suspicious items were found,” an official had said.

Several hospitals and schools in Delhi have recently been targeted with bomb threat emails that claimed the presence of explosives on their premises. However, investigators found the threats to be false alarms.