The passengers and crew of an Air India flight from Delhi to Chicago, which made an emergency diversion to a remote Canadian town on Tuesday due to a bomb hoax, have been rescued by a Royal Canadian Air Force jet after they were stranded in the icy wilderness.
Air India flight AI127 departed Delhi at 3:20 a.m. on Tuesday, but around 11 hours into the 14-hour flight to Chicago, the Boeing 777-300 with 211 passengers and crew onboard made an emergency diversion to Iqaluit on the vast ice-capped Baffin Island.
A spokesperson for the airline said that the flight “was the subject of a security threat posted online” and that as a “responsible airline operator,” it had taken the hoax threat as genuine.
It appears that Air India had initially hoped that the local authorities in Iqaluit could rescreen the passengers and sweep the plane for any evidence of a bomb before allowing it to continue its journey to Chicago.
Instead, however, the crew ran out of hours to continue the flight to Chicago because the city of Iqaluit does not have its own bomb disposal unit to carry out the necessary checks of the aircraft.
As a result, all of the passengers and crew were effectively stranded in Iqaluit.
Local officials in Iqaluit said they didn’t have the resources to deal with so many stranded passengers, and more than ten hours after the plane had landed, Canada’s Minister of Emergency Preparedness, Harjit Sajjan, decided to intervene because Air India had failed to find a solution.
“Despite great efforts, the city of Iqaluit is not equipped to house these passengers,” Sajjan said in a statement posted to X. “After consultation with Transport Minister Anita Anand and in my role as Minister of Emergency Preparedness, I have approved a request for Canadian Armed Forces resources to ease the pressure on Iqaluit and send passengers safely to their destination in Chicago.”
A couple of hours later, Air India confirmed that a Royal Canadian Air Force plane had arrived in Iqaluit to ferry the stranded passengers to their intended destination in Chicago.
“We thank the Canadian authorities and authorities at Iqaluit airport for their support and assistance extended to the passengers and Air India during this unexpected disruption,” the airline said in a statement.
In an earlier statement, Air India said that it “and other local airlines have been subject to a number of threats in recent days. Though all have subsequently been found to be hoaxes, as a responsible airline operator, all threats are taken seriously. The inconvenience to customers is sincerely regretted.”
