Indigo staffer mishears 'ballast' as 'blast', creates security scare at Bhopal airport

There's a saying: Don't believe everything you hear, and only half of what you see.

An Indigo staffer learnt it the hard way after she created a security scare at the Raja Bhoj International Airport in Bhopal. The woman staffer mistook the term ballast as blast, which led to the sounding of an alert at the establishment. The incident occurred on Thursday morning, the airport officials said.

Airport authorities said in a statement, "At 0925 hrs, Indigo ticketing counter received a call enquiring about ballast in flight 6E-7931 bound for Agra, which was misunderstood by the Indigo staff as blast."


Following this, the BATC (Bomb Threat Assessment Committee) was called and after analysing the facts it declared the call as non-specific, the airport authorities said in a statement.

Amid this chaos, an emergency was declared at the airport and all the security systems were activated. This led to the activation of tyre killers which resulted in traffic jams, creating more confusion.

"Unfortunately, a fast-moving vehicle was crossing through the tyre killers, when the emergency switch of the tyre killers got activated and blocked the vehicle," said the acting director of the airport Amrit Minj.

"Airport management regrets the inconvenience and damage caused due to this unfortunate incident," he said.

Ballast, meaning extra weight, is a term used by airlines to add load to the aircraft in case it was not having sufficient passenger load in the flight to maintain balance in air.

An airport personnel said on Friday that as the woman staffer had joined recently, she was unable to differentiate between the terms ballast and blast, which led to the confusion. The call was received from Gurgaon, he said.

"Though ballast is a widely used term in aviation and railways, it is difficult for a fresher or common man to understand the difference between the two," he told PTI.

No action has been taken in this matter so far.

With PTI Inputs