For the 93 passengers and 5 crew members aboard Air India flight AI 772, the morning of November 11, 2026, began with the standard rhythm of air travel. The Airbus A320neo was prepared for its scheduled departure from Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose International Airport in Kolkata, bound for Mumbai. The flight, slated to take off at 10:20 AM, was meant to be a routine transit. However, the pre-takeoff checks—a critical layer of aviation safety—revealed something that halted the process entirely: a threatening message scrawled on the mirror of the aircraft’s restroom.
The discovery of the note immediately shifted the atmosphere from the mundane to the critical. According to Kolkata airport director Vikram Singh, the message was not merely a vague threat; it was chillingly specific. The note claimed that the aircraft would be hijacked at 11:10 AM. This precise timing forced the crew and airport authorities to treat the situation with the utmost gravity, as the window between the discovery and the threatened time left little room for error.
(1/2) Panic at Kolkata airport after a hijack threat was found scrawled on a lavatory mirror of a Mumbai-bound Air India flight. The plane was moved to an isolation bay and investigation is ongoing. #AirIndia #Kolkata #HijackThreat https://t.co/Uq6IgmuwtA
Upon discovering the message, the pilot acted swiftly, alerting Air Traffic Control to the security breach. The response was immediate and procedural. To ensure the safety of the airport and the surrounding aircraft, the Airbus A320neo was moved to an isolation bay—a designated area of an airport designed to contain potential security threats away from terminal buildings and other planes. Vikram Singh confirmed that all 93 passengers were safely deboarded from the aircraft, ensuring that no one remained in the potential line of fire as security protocols were enacted.
Authorities are tasked with verifying the threat and identifying the individual responsible for the note.
Once the aircraft was secured in the isolation bay, the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) and airport security personnel launched a thorough inspection of the cabin and the restroom where the note was found. The investigation into the origin of the message remains ongoing. Authorities are tasked with verifying the threat and identifying the individual responsible for the note. While the inspection of the aircraft has been exhaustive, no suspicious items have been found thus far. For the passengers, the experience was jarring; one traveler remarked that they never expected to face such a situation while preparing for a routine flight to Mumbai.
#Kolkata: A hijack threat note was found in the washroom of an Air India flight from Kolkata to Mumbai before takeoff. The aircraft was moved to an isolation bay and passengers were evacuated as security teams launched an investigation. More details awaited. #AirIndia #Mumbai #HijackThreat
This incident at Kolkata airport does not exist in a vacuum. It follows a recent security scare involving an IndiGo flight, which received a hijack threat note and was forced to make an emergency landing in Bengaluru on November 7, 2026. These back-to-back incidents have heightened the focus on aviation security protocols. As agencies continue their work to trace the source of the Kolkata threat, the aviation community remains on high alert, balancing the necessity of rigorous security checks with the reality of maintaining operational flow in the face of such unsettling disruptions.