Zeenews Bureau
Kochi: It was a flight that went horribly “wrong way”. Destined to first land at Kozhikode after taking off from Thiruvananthapuram, the passengers of an Alliance Air flight were in for a shock when they found themselves at Kochi airport.
What added to their shock is the fact that the pilot of the flight had announced that they had landed at Kozhikode.
In all, there were 32 passengers onboard the Monday flight that was flying on the Thiruvananthapuram-Calicut (Kozhikode)-Cochin (Kochi)-Agathi (Lakshadweep) sector.
The incident was reported on Tuesday by a leading daily.
After the fiasco, the pilot is reported to have told the air traffic controllers that he thought they had landed in Kozhikode and that there probably was some navigational error.
The airline, however, tried to downplay the incident. A spokesperson said the flight directly went to Kochi as there was a last-minute change in the crew's duty timings.
Technically, a pilot will know which airport he was approaching well before the flight lands.
A passenger reportedly said the crew first announced that they had reached Kozhikode, but the pilot later came out of the cockpit and acknowledged he was under the wrong impression that they had landed in Kozhikode.
A senior ATC official at Cochin airport said it may not be a navigational error, but a decision by the airline to divert the flight.
The passengers bound for Kozhikode were first deplaned and flown to their destination four hours later after the plane flew to Agathi in Lakshadweep and came back.
First Published: Tuesday, January 17, 2012, 10:06