A handwritten hijack threat note was found in a lavatory of Air India flight AI 772 at Kolkata airport on Wednesday morning, before the aircraft was due to depart for Mumbai. The discovery led the pilot to alert air traffic control, and security personnel were rushed to the aircraft. The aircraft was then moved to an isolation bay for a security check, a standard step when a threat is reported on a plane that has not yet taken off.
The flight was carrying 93 passengers and five crew members at the time. Security agencies have taken up the investigation. Preliminary indications point to a passenger as the author of the note, but this has not been confirmed. No suspect has been identified in the available reports, and it remains unclear whether the note is a genuine threat or a hoax. The reports do not say whether the passengers were offboarded before the security check was carried out.
No statement from Air India has been included in the available material, so the airline's position on the incident and on the handling of the aircraft is not yet known. The reports also do not indicate whether the flight has been rescheduled or whether the passengers have been placed on another service.
Threat notes of this kind have surfaced on Indian carriers before. In 2024, a note containing the word "bomb" was found on an Air India flight from Mumbai to New York, and that aircraft was diverted to Delhi. The same year, a second washroom note was found on a Delhi to Vadodara flight. That note was later declared a hoax. The recurrence of such notes, often discovered in lavatories where they can be left unnoticed, has repeatedly drawn attention to the need for thorough cabin checks before departure.
The Kolkata incident fits that pattern. The sequence of pilot alert, air traffic control notification, security response and isolation of the aircraft mirrors the procedure followed in earlier cases, where the origin of the note and its credibility were established only after investigation. Until security agencies complete their work, the authenticity of the Kolkata note and the identity of its author remain open questions, and no conclusion has been drawn about whether the threat was real.
Source: pgurus.com
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