Air India flight returns to Thai island after bomb threat

BANGKOK: An Air India flight from Thailand's Phuket island to New Delhi was forced to make an emergency landing Friday shortly after takeoff because of an on-board bomb threat, the Thai airports authority said.

The incident comes a day after a London-bound Air India passenger jet crashed in the Indian city of Ahmedabad, killing at least 265 people on board and on the ground.

Airports of Thailand said on its Facebook page for Phuket that the pilot of the Airbus A320 radioed air traffic control that a bomb-threat message had been found on board.

Flight tracking website FlightRadar24 shows the Phuket flight making a U-turn over the Andaman Sea soon after takeoff, then circling multiple times off the island´s coast before landing.

AOT did not provide details on the bomb threat. Air India did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Indian airlines and airports were inundated with hoax bomb threats last year, with nearly 1,000 hoax calls and messages received in the first 10 months, nearly 10 times that of 2023.