Passenger arrested after trying to open Akasa Air flight’s emergency exit in Varanasi before takeoff; flight later departed safely for Mumbai.

Varanasi: Officials stated on Tuesday that a passenger on an Akasa Air flight from Varanasi to Mumbai was arrested after he allegedly tried to open the plane’s emergency exit before takeoff. The event happened on flight QP 1497, which was supposed to leave Lal Bahadur Shastri International Airport for Mumbai at 6:45 p.m. on Monday.

Police added that as the plane was taxiing toward the runway, Sujit Singh, a passenger from Gaura Badshahpur in Jaunpur district, tried to open the emergency escape. The pilot told Air Traffic Control (ATC) and returned the plane back to the apron when the cabin crew sent out an alert.

Passenger taken into custody

The police reported that security guards led all the passengers off the plane and arrested Sujit Singh for questioning. Praveen Kumar Singh, the Phoolpur Station House Officer (SHO), reported that the passenger told investigators he tried to open the exit “out of curiosity.” The officer informed that Sujit Singh had been arrested. After getting through security, the flight left for Mumbai at about 7:45 PM.

Last month, Akasa Air, a three-year-old airline, claimed it will be adding more flights to both domestic and international destinations. For example, it will start flying non-stop from Cochin and Chennai to Abu Dhabi. Delhi would be the airline’s third operational base, following Bengaluru and Mumbai. The airline will have more than 165 departures from Delhi every week.

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In addition to Delhi, the airline will be improving flights from Kolkata. The airline will grow its presence in the Middle East even more by increasing departures from Abu Dhabi by 14%. It will also add non-stop flights between Abu Dhabi and Cochin and Chennai and improve its codeshare cooperation with Etihad Airways. It added in a release that departures from Jeddah will go up to 26 flights a week, which is around 270% more than in Winter 2024. Frequency to Riyadh would also go up to 5 times a week.