Kolkata, May 05: A Spicejet flight made a ‘priority landing’ in Kolkata after two Russian passengers, including a woman in a burqa, behaved “suspiciously” on board, an airport official said.
The pilot was given a priority landing after passengers reported the couple to air crew and the woman refused to take off her burqa for identification, Kolkata airport director R. Srinivasan said.
The low-cost SpiceJet flight with 123 passengers on board was heading from Pune in the south via the capital New Delhi and on to Kolkata.
“The two Russian passengers, one wearing a burqa had boarded the flight from New Delhi,” Srinivasan said. “Some of the co-passengers found their movement suspicious and drew the attention of the crew members.”
The plane was taken to an isolation bay at the airport for a search and was surrounded by CISF personnel, the bomb squad, fire brigade and the police, the sources saida. The two Russians have been detained by the authorities for questioning.
The Delhi-Kolkata-Dhaka Spicejet flight 208 with 123 passengers onboard landed at the NSC Bose Airport here around noon.
The burqa-clad passenger and another person sitting next to her were offloaded and the aircraft searched, the sources said. The burqa-clad passenger, however, turned out to be a woman, the sources said.
Her large physique made the crew suspect that she was actually a man and since her identity could not be verified onboard, the pilot asked for permission from the ATC to make a priority landing, the sources said.
Flights at the airport remained unaffected.
-PTI