A Ganesh Nadar

The public relations manager of Indian Airlines is very firm, "You cannot see the aircraft, it is in a high security area. There is a court order that there should be no activity as far as that particular aircraft is concerned."

I wanted to view the Airbus 300 that made headlines when it was hijacked to Kandahar, Afghanistan, with 154 passengers and crew aboard, the night before Christmas.

But K Swaminathan filled me in on the manner in which Indian Airlines has stepped up its surveillance since the Kandahar mishap. Passengers, holding boarding passes, are now frisked twice. First by the police and then by airline personnel. The lacuna, to my mind, still seems to be that passengers are frisked only in the terminal and not immediately before they board the plane on the tarmac. I asked Swaminathan about that.

"When it is very hot I cannot make our passengers line up in the sun. That is why we do the second frisking just outside the lounge, where there is a covered area. Even the baggage is randomly checked again."

Swaminathan upholds IA's record during the hijacking. The airlines kept in constant touch with relatives of the passengers, he said. Indian Airlines called and informed the worried folks and did not wait for questions to pour in. Swaminathan recalls he was rather worried when the hijacking dragged on longer that usual, but he was sure it was only a matter of time before the crisis ended.

He remembers an incident, that occurred a few years ago, on a Bangalore-Mangalore flight. A young college boy very adventurously tried to hijack the flight with a tennis ball and a gilli (the stick from the gilli-danda game). He was overpowered in a few minutes and nothing happened. "All hijacks over the years have ended on a positive note," explains Swaminathan.

Indian Airlines has plans to sell the ill-fated aircraft. But there is currently a court order stalling the sale. If the legal issue is resolved, the plane, that was never destined to see a Kandahar sunrise, may exit IA's fleet.

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