Sao Paulo’s largest airport closes after false hijacking warning

A hijacking warning, apparently sent by mistake by the pilot of an aircraft owned by the Brazilian airline Azul, forced the closure of São Paulo’s largest city airport, São Paulo International Airport, early this Friday evening in Portugal. located among the skyscrapers of prestigious areas in the south of this Brazilian city.

Special security forces, namely anti-terrorist groups, were mobilized and surrounded the plane upon landing, but an hour later it was checked that there was no danger to either passengers or the airport, and the plane was released.

The flight took off from Recife, the capital of the northeastern state of Pernambuco, and at around 20:40 local time, 00:40 in Lisbon, as the aircraft was already approaching Congonhas, the control tower received a warning message from the pilot about a “hijack”. illicit”, which usually means that the plane was hijacked by a strange person, presumably a terrorist or air pirate.

Landing and takeoff operations were immediately suspended in Congonhas, and an alert was raised to the emergency teams, namely the Federal Police in charge of security inside the airport, the military police in charge of external security, the civilian police (judiciary) and the Fire Department. .

When the plane landed, the control tower directed it to the so-called “intervention zone”, further away and surrounded by well-armed security forces and firefighters ready for anything. The security forces began to apply emergency protocols for high-risk situations, but little by little it became clear that the situation was not as originally warned.

At 21:49, more than an hour after the warning was given and no risk was confirmed, the aircraft was cleared to proceed to its usual landing site and everyone was cleared to disembark. But in that more than an hour, 22 flights were disrupted, diverted to other airports or failed to take off, and a crowd of frightened passengers suffered.

In his statement, Azul did not acknowledge the pilot’s erroneous sending of the “illegal hijack” code and hinted that the error was caused by a misinterpretation of who was in the control tower, as he claimed a warning sent from the aircraft commander would be “illegal interference”, which is not the same thing. However, the company did not go into details, without explaining what kind of “illegal interference” occurred on board, how it was resolved, and whether the passengers of the aircraft were endangered.

Congonhas International Airport, surrounded this Saturday by gigantic buildings but with nothing around when it was built, is one of the three busiest in Brazil and South America. Paulo and Brasilia International Airport in the federal capital of Brazil.