Kerala man nabbed for smashing emergency exit window mid-air, trying to open door in Kochi-bound flight | VIDEO
People aboard a Batik Air flight from Kuala Lumpur to Kochi suffered a major mid-air scare when a passenger suddenly broke the emergency exit window and tried to open the door as well
People aboard a Batik Air flight from Kuala Lumpur to Kochi suffered a major mid-air scare when a passenger suddenly broke the emergency exit window and tried to open the door as well. The police said that he then tried to pull open the emergency exit door, despite people tring to calm him down as the move could lead to a drop in cabin pressure.
People aboard a Batik Air flight from Kuala Lumpur to Kochi suffered a major mid-air scare when a passenger suddenly broke the emergency exit window and tried to open the door as well. The police said that he then tried to pull open the emergency exit door, despite people tring to calm him down as the move could lead to a drop in cabin pressure.
People aboard a Batik Air flight from Kuala Lumpur to Kochi suffered a major mid-air scare when a passenger suddenly broke the emergency exit window and tried to open the door as well. The police said that he then tried to pull open the emergency exit door, despite people tring to calm him down as the move could lead to a drop in cabin pressure.
A Kerala man was arrested after he allegedly attempted to open the emergency exit of a Batik Air flight on Wednesday night.
The incident, which reportedly took place mid-flight aboard the OD231, a Boeing 737 flight from Kuala Lumpur to Kochi, which could have been a potential disaster, led to no casualties.
The accused has been identified as 36-year-old Jamsheer Athanikkal, a native of Kootannad in Palakkad, who was handed over to the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) as soon as the flight landed at the Cochin airport.
They later handed him over to the Nedumbassery Police, who arrested him.
How it happened
According to the FIR filed by the police, the incident took place between 9:30 PM and 11:05 PM, when the aircraft was mid-flight, en route to Kochi. This flight typically takes just above four hours.
From seat 12A, Jamsheer allegedly began behaving erratically all of a sudden, before forcefully kicking and breaking the window panel of the emergency exit, as per an OnManorama report.
The police said that he then tried to pull open the emergency exit door, despite people trying to calm him down as the move could lead to a drop in cabin pressure.
A 2017 BBC report of a similar incident shows that though such doors are typically designed to be sealed into place by the higher pressure inside, if it was still opened somehow, it would only activate the inflatable slides, which would probably have been torn off by the force of the oncoming air.
"The pilot would declare an emergency, and would immediately begin an emergency descent (to reduce the cabin pressure difference)," the report added, citing Dr David Birch, Senior Lecturer in Aerospace Engineering at Surrey University.
When cabin crew members and a few passengers tried to restrain him, he allegedly issued verbal threats to them, spreading panic inside the flight till he was restrained after a lot of effort.
A complaint was then lodged by Bindu Mohan Nair, the Security In-charge of Batik Air at the Cochin airport.
While it was initially speculated that Jamsheer may have been intoxicated or suffered a psychological episode, the police later rejected the intoxication claim.
“He has not consumed alcohol it seems. Currently, we don’t feel he has mental health issues either but it needs to be confirmed. A detailed investigation is ongoing," an officer said.