Jet Airways flight makes emergency landing in Muscat after ‘suspicious’ tweet raises bomb scare
Jet Airways flight 9W-536 from Mumbai to Dubai today made an emergency landing at the Muscat International Airport after a phone call warning of a bomb onboard was made to the airliner’s call centre in India, reports said.
Jet Airways has confirmed the emergency landing at Muscat post the bomb threat. The passengers disembarked safely allowing Omani security agencies to search the aircraft, baggage and cargo.
Here’s the Jet Airways statement confirming the emergency landing:
Following the threat, the message was relayed to the pilot and the aircraft was immediately diverted to the Muscat International Airport, which accorded a priority landing to the plane. However, no bomb was found onboard. The Boeing 727-800 aircraft was carrying 54 passengers and seven crew members.
Oman Airport Management Company (OAMC), engineer and acting CEO, Saeed Khamis al Zadjali, told Muscat Daily, “The airport was closed as we had received a signal from the airline for purpose of emergency landing. A code five was initiated by the airlines and this is generally for bomb threat. After the code was received by the airport we went through a standard procedure to deal with the situation. The situation is under control and operations have resumed as normal.”
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Riyaz Kuttery, general manager, Jet Airways, Oman, confirmed to Times of Oman that the aircraft landed at 1.08 pm (Oman time).
“It was taken to an isolated bay and all the passengers were evacuated. The flight is right now grounded at Muscat International Airport and we are waiting for clearances from the concerned authorities to fly again,” Kuttery told Times of Oman.
Soon after the pilot informed Muscat Air Traffic Controller about the suspected threat, all emergency measures were put in place with ambulances and police vehicles forming part of the procedure. The airport was also shut down for around 15 minutes.
Sketchy details are now slowly emerging with a mysterious tweet sent out by one Surinder Partap eight hours ago warning about a possible bomb in that particular flight. Security agencies have found the account to be a fake one.