Bomb threat forces Air India flight to make emergency landing in Phuket
An Air India flight was forced to make an emergency landing in Thailand on Friday after receiving a bomb threat, a day after the airline was involved in the worst plane crash in a decade that killed over 240 people.
The 156 passengers on Vistara flight AI 379 were escorted off in line with emergency plans, the Thai airports authority said.
Vistara is an Air India subsidiary.
According to flight tracker FlightRadar24, the aircraft took off from the Phuket airport for New Delhi at 9.30am local time, only to make a wide loop around the Andaman Sea and return to southern Thailand.
Authorities didn't disclose the specific nature of the threat. A Thai official said they searched the aircraft after it landed but did not find a bomb.
Air India did not give a statement on the incident immediately.
The incident came a day after an Air India flight departing for London crashed moments after takeoff in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad, killing all but one of the 241 people on board.
The casualties included 169 Indian, 53 British, one Canadian and seven Portuguese citizens, the airline said.
Indian civil aviation faced a crisis last year after what turned out to be hoax bomb threats forced emergency landings or cancellations of a number of flights.
Airlines and airports fielded nearly 1,000 hoax calls and messages in the first 10 months of 2024, about 10 times more than in the whole of the previous year.
In Ahmedabad, meanwhile, rescue workers continued their search on Friday for missing people and aircraft components in the charred buildings of a medical college hostel as the country reeled from the worst aviation disaster in a decade.
The Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner with 242 people on board bound for Gatwick airport, south of London, took off over a residential area and disappeared from view before a huge fireball was seen rising into the sky, CCTV footage showed.
Air India said the lone survivor of the crash, a British man, was receiving treatment in a local hospital. The passenger said he heard a loud noise shortly after Flight AI171 took off.
The Indian government was considering grounding the Boeing 787 fleet in the wake of the crash, broadcaster NDTV reported.
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