New Delhi: High drama was witnessed at the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi on September 20 as authorities declared a full emergency and carried out a mock hijack exercise involving an Alliance Air aircraft carrying 127 passengers and eight crew-members to check security preparedness.

The drama unfolded with the pilot of the flight on Delhi-Raipur-Nagpur-Delhi route, Capt R Mohan, giving a hijack signal to the control tower in Delhi after the Airbus-320 took off from Nagpur on the last leg of its journey.

A full emergency was sounded at the airport and as the aircraft, bearing registration number VT-EYA, landed at 12:03 hours (IST), it was surrounded by crack Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) commandos. Fire-tenders and ambulances also took up position nearby.

The Air Traffic Controllers asked the pilot to move the aircraft to an isolated bay.

The passengers, six crew-members and two pilots, were later off-loaded and taken to the arrival terminal after the 45-minute-long high drama ended.

Confirming it as a mock exercise, Civil Aviation Secretary K Roy Paul said, "We carried out the drill to check the alertness of security forces."

In the given circumstances, such drills were essential to test the alertness and effectiveness of the anti- hijack and anti-fire security measures, he said.

The Bureau of Civil Aviation Security had planned out the entire operation beforehand and only few top officials knew about it, Roy Paul said, adding "We cannot alert all concerned when we are carrying out an exercise to test the alertness of the entire system."

PTI