24 years on, pilot of IC-814, hijacked from Nepal, reveals how he scared Lahore ATC to get permission to land
New Delhi, Aug 6 (PTI) Twenty-four years after the shocking hijacking of Indian Airlines flight IC-814 from Kathmandu in Nepal, its pilot Captain Devi Sharan has revealed that he had made a secret plan to scare the Air Traffic Control at Lahore by pretending to crash land the aircraft on a highway.
Till date, it was understood that Capt Saran, his co-pilot Rajinder Kumar and flight engineer AK Jaggia had decided to land the aircraft at the Lahore airport against the decision of the Pakistani authorities, and while doing so, they mistook a highway for the runway as lights on the runway were switched off.
It was a narrow escape as the aircraft was about to touch the highway when they realised it and pulled it up immediately. Way back in 2003-04, Jaggia, while narrating the IC-814 hijacking story to the media, said that when ATC refused them permission to land at the airport and switched off the runway and airport lights, they had no option but to grope in the dark to locate the runway as the aircraft was dangerously low on fuel.
