24 years on, pilot reveals how he scared Pakistan to let hijacked IC-814 land

New Delhi, August 6

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.

Pretended to crash-land

When the Lahore ATC refused permission to land the aircraft, I made a plan to pretend to crash-land it… my plan worked, and the ATC said the runway is open, and we safely landed there. Captain Devi Sharan

Till date, it was understood that Capt Sharan, 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.

Capt Sharan, while narrating the IC-814 hijacking story to the mediapersons, said: “There were two terrorists standing behind me in the cockpit, and whatever I used to communicate to my co-pilot or the crew, they used to understand everything. So I decided to keep certain things to myself.”

He added, “When the Lahore ATC refused permission to land the aircraft, I made a plan to pretend to crash-land the aircraft so that it would put pressure on them to switch on the runway lights and allow us to land there. A device called a transponder fitted in the aircraft provides location details to the ATC and, according to him, with the help of this device, they thought that he was going to crash-land the aircraft. “Believe me, my plan worked, and I got a communication from the ATC that the runway is open, and we safely landed,” Sharan said.