Heavily armed police stormed an American Airlines jet in Buenos Aires on Thursday night after passengers heard noises coming from the cargo hold shortly after the Boeing 777-300 departed the Argentine capital for New York JFK.
American Airlines flight AA954 departed Buenos Aires Ezeiza International Airport at around 9:20 pm on October 31, but as the plane was still in its initial ascent, passengers and crew members started to hear strange noises coming from the cargo hold below them.
Flight attendants alerted the pilots to a banging noise coming from the cargo, and the flight crew decided to make an immediate return to Buenos Aires after reporting a potential security problem aboard the plane.
After landing back in Buenos Aires, the aircraft was met by heavily armed police who used a cargo pallet loader to gain access to the hold and storm the aircraft as they searched for a potential suspect.
After thoroughly searching the cargo hold, however, there was no evidence of anyone, and the cause of the strange noises remains a mystery. Unfortunately, after all that drama, the flight couldn’t continue to New York because the crew ran out of hours.
All 243 passengers onboard were put up in hotels overnight and the flight is due to depart for a second attempt on Friday evening.
Bizarrely, earlier this year, a very similar incident occurred during a flight operated by the Turkish low-cost carrier Pegasus Airlines, which made an emergency diversion after cries for help could be heard coming from the front cargo hold.
The flight from Istanbul to Riyadh made an emergency diversion to Antalya in Turkey after passengers could hear someone shouting “help me” from the cargo hold.
After landing in Antalya, however, a search of the cargo hold revealed that no one was trapped, and the source of the shouting was never traced.
These kinds of events are not, however, unheard of. In 2021, a baggage handler in Mumbai crawled into the cargo hold of an Indigo Airways Airbus A320 and took a nap, only to then find that the plane had departed with him still inside.
The baggage handler was only discovered when the aircraft landed in Dubai, much to the surprise of local airport workers. The man had to be processed by immigration officials before being sent back to Mumbai on the exact same aircraft – although, this time, in the passenger cabin.
