The Air India Quiz: Six Questions on the 7500 Jaipur Diversion

On Wednesday morning, an ordinary long-haul flight turned into one of the strangest aviation scares of the year. Air India flight AI2030 was on its way from Frankfurt to Delhi when air traffic control picked up a transponder signal reserved for hijackings. Within the hour, the Boeing jet was on the ground in Jaipur, parked in an isolation bay while security teams searched the aircraft. The alert turned out to be a false alarm, according to officials cited by PTI, as The Hindu BusinessLine reported. If you think you kept the details straight, this Air India quiz will check.

Pilots learn three distress codes early in training: seventy-six hundred for radio failure, seventy-seven hundred for a general emergency, and seventy-five hundred for unlawful interference, the discreet signal a crew transmits when a hijacking may be in progress. Because the code is entered digit by digit, senior pilots said accidentally setting it is extremely unlikely, according to the Economic Times. That is what made the AI2030 alert so hard to ignore, and why it triggered a full emergency response. Keep that in mind for the Air India quiz below.

Security sources told PTI that the pilot-in-command transmitted the code while the aircraft was inside the Mumbai flight information region. ATC directed the plane to Jaipur instead of Delhi, where it landed just after half past nine in the morning and was moved to an isolation bay within ten minutes. Teams from the CISF, local police, the anti-terrorism squad, and bomb detection and disposal units swept the aircraft, the passengers, and their luggage. Then the story got stranger: the Daily Jagran reported that after the alert showed up on the ground, controllers contacted the cockpit and the pilot insisted there was no hijacking and maintained he had never set the code. The report added that India's aviation regulator, the DGCA, ordered a probe into whether a technical error in the air traffic control system had produced the alert on its own.

Once the sweep found nothing, the passengers were moved into the terminal building and, after clearance came through, reboarded the same aircraft. Air India said in a statement that the flight was diverted following a perceived security concern, and the jet left Jaipur that afternoon to complete its trip to Delhi, with the passengers finally reaching the capital later that day. The whole episode raises a question investigators will be answering for weeks: how does a hijack signal appear when the pilot says he never sent one? Time for the Air India quiz.

Six questions on the Jaipur diversion

Each question comes straight from the reporting above, and the answer follows right after it. Cover the answers with your hand for the full Air India quiz effect.

One. What was the flight number of the diverted aircraft? a) AI 2030 b) AI 191 c) AI 144. Correct answer: a.

Two. Which transponder code did air traffic control detect? a) The hijack code b) The low-fuel code c) The cabin-pressure code. Correct answer: a.

Three. Which airport did the flight divert to? a) Jaipur b) Ahmedabad c) Mumbai. Correct answer: a.

Four. Roughly when did the aircraft land in Jaipur? a) Just after half past nine in the morning b) Just after noon c) Close to midnight. Correct answer: a.

Five. How many people were on board? a) Two hundred ninety-three passengers and thirteen crew b) Two hundred and ten passengers and nine crew c) Three hundred forty passengers and sixteen crew. Correct answer: a.

Six. What did the DGCA order after the incident? a) A probe into a possible ATC technical error b) A fleet-wide grounding of the aircraft type c) Criminal charges against the pilot. Correct answer: a.

How to score your Air India quiz

Five or six right and you followed this story closer than most of the internet did. Three or four right means you got the shape of it but missed a detail or two along the way. Fewer than three, and this Air India quiz suggests a second read of the timeline above. What sticks with you is the open question at the center of it all: an investigation now has to explain a hijack signal that the pilot says he never sent.

Aviation has been producing odd stories all year, from the Spirit Airlines shutdown and its effect on holiday fares to the push for bamboo biofuel on future flights. If this Air India quiz put you in a travel mood, those are a good place to start, and check back for more quizzes every week.