American Airlines 787-9 Diverts Over Non-Credible Bomb Threat...

Intro

A couple of days ago, American Airlines flight 292 from New York JFK to New Delhi, India, was routinely operating a 787-9 on one of Americans longest flights. Well, let's just say that this flight quite literally took a turn...

The Details

American Airlines flight 292 was scheduled to depart at 8:35 pm from New York JFK on Saturday, February 22nd, landing in New Delhi on Sunday, February 23rd at 9:35 pm. The first 10 ish hours of the flight remained perfectly normal until the plane was just off the coast of Turkmenistan.

To paraphrase, there was some sort of bomb threat for someone, letting them know that a bomb would detonate once the plane was 10,000 feet inbound for New Delhi. The plane was refused by Indian Airspace, and thus, the decision was made to divert all the way back to Rome.

The Italian airforce helped out by providing an escort through the 10,000 feet threshold on approach to Rome.

Imagine falling asleep North of Turkey and waking up to this out of your window 😅

What was supposed to be a 14.5-hour flight to New Delhi turned into a 14-hour flight to Rome. That is one heck of a backtrack

My Thoughts

One would assume that non-credible bomb threats happen quite frequently, and there has even been an uptick in these threats across India. Just look at some of the flights that had to divert due to these bomb threats. Now, the American aviation authority verifies these threats more credibly than the Indian government, and my guess would be that if it were up to the captain, he would have proceeded on to New Delhi.

However, the question remains as to why there was a diversion to Rome. Looking at the map of the world, it seems to be that there is quite an obvious answer. To the East, you have Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and Iran (not everyone is like me and wants to explore these countries), and to the North, you have Ukraine and Russia. Ordinarily, I would have said that Doha would have been a good point to divert to, but that would require flying through Iranian airspace...

So the closest point to divert safely would be Turkey or Greece, and Rome isn't that much further. AA currently serves the Rome market from PHL daily, meaning there are ground ops there to sort out the situation.

Final Thoughts

All in all, I am happy to hear that everyone is safe and sound and that the plane should be on its way to Delhi later today (Monday) after all of the checks are complete. However, going forward, this should be sorted out by the Indian aviation authorities as this can't keep happening...