The Hyderabad-bound Lufthansa aircraft which made a mid-air U-turn for Germany’s Frankfurt was forced to return due to a bomb threat to the flight, a Hyderabad airport official said on Monday.
“The flight returned to its origin because of a bomb threat which was received while the aircraft was still outside the Indian airspace,” the official told.
Earlier, a Lufthansa spokesperson said the flight did not receive permission to land at Hyderabad’s Rajiv Gandhi International Airport, and therefore returned to its source, Frankfurt, Germany’s busiest and Europe’s sixth-busiest international airport.
Lufthansa flight LH752 departed Frankfurt at around 2:14 pm local time (5:44 pm in India) on Sunday and was scheduled to land at Hyderabad early Monday. However, flight tracker data showed a diversion a few hours into the journey.
According to a passenger who was on board, the flight was only two hours into its journey when it turned around.
“It was a smooth journey and after about two hours in the air, we were told that we would be returning to Frankfurt.
Now at the airport, they are providing us accommodation for the night. They have told us that we will fly out tomorrow morning at 10 am (1:30 pm IST) on the same flight,” news agency quoted a passenger as saying.
“We just landed back in Frankfurt around 15 minutes ago and all we were told is that Hyderabad hasn’t given permission to land there,” the person, who was travelling from the United States to visit her mother in the southern Indian city, added.
Lufthansa’s live flight tracker on its website showed LH752 landed back at Frankfurt around 5:30 pm local time (9pm IST). According to the website, the aircraft is a Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner.
The Boeing 787 Dreamliner has come under scrutiny in India due to last week’s deadly Ahmedabad plane crash, in which 241 out of 242 people on board lost their lives. In all, 274 people were killed, including those on ground, as the plane crashed minutes after taking off for London Gatwick Airport.
