The Bangkok-to-Istanbul flight made the emergency landing at the airport earlier in the day following a bomb threat.
“We have declared the aircraft safe,” after extensive checks by bomb disposal and dog squad teams, said a spokesman for the Central Industrial Security Force, which provides security at the Indira Gandhi International Airport.
The Airbus 330 aircraft was over Indian airspace on a scheduled flight when the crew discovered a message on a mirror in the bathroom, which said that there was a bomb in the cargo hold, and requested an emergency landing, said a spokesman for the airport in Delhi. The plane was carrying 134 passengers, Turkish Airlines said in a statement. It didn`t say how many crew members were on board.
The aircraft landed safely at the airport and was immediately taken to an isolation bay where it was checked for any explosives, the airport spokesman said. The plane was evacuated on landing, he said.
Turkish Airlines earlier said in a statement that its TK0065 flight from Bangkok to Istanbul was diverted to Delhi following “a possible bomb threat on board.”
The carrier has made at least four emergency landings due to bomb scares since late March, diverting two flights back to Istanbul while one plane landed in Copenhagen and another in Casablanca. No explosives were found in any of the instances, which involved flights to Tokyo, São Paulo, New York and Basel, Switzerland. The interrupted flights that didn’t return to Turkey continued to their final destinations after security checks.
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