Air India flight from Mumbai transmits emergency signal over London: Flight tracker

An Air India flight from Mumbai to London transmitted an emergency signal while it was flying over the UK capital, flight tracker Flightradar24 said on Thursday.
However, the reason why the emergency signal was sent out is not known, it added.
“Air India flight- AIC129- from Mumbai to London is squawking 7700, indicating a general emergency. Reason currently unknown”, Flightradar posted on X.
The Squawk Codes are often heard during various kinds of emergency situations, like emergency landings etc.
Squawk codes are used by Air Traffic Control (ATC) to identify and track aircraft when they are flying. They are unique four-digit numbers, ranging from 0000 to 7777. Some of these codes are fixed values signifying specific scenarios, others are randomly generated by the ATC. The ATC generates a squawk code for the aircraft when it enters its range, sending a signal to the pilot seeking to allow them to enter the aircraft’s transponder. The transponder then transmits this back to the ATC.
Air India flight AIC129, on Thursday, squawked 7700, which is a universal transponder code indicating that the aircraft was experiencing a general emergency and required immediate attention from the ATC.
Meanwhile, Flightradar said that the Air India flight AIC129 stopped squawking 7700 minutes later and landed safely at London’s Heathrow Airport.
The latest Air India incident has come on the back of the recent emergency landing of Indian flights, 14 of them for different reasons including hoax bomb threats on flights.
On Wednesday, a Vistara flight operating from Frankfurt to Mumbai received a security threat on social media. The aircraft was taken to an isolation bay for inspection after landing safely at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport on Thursday morning.
The second incident also on Thursday involved an IndiGo flight operating from Istanbul.
“Flight 6E 18, operating from Istanbul to Mumbai, received a security-related alert. Upon landing, the aircraft was isolated, and all passengers were safely disembarked,” the airline said.
On Wednesday, two flights – one from Akasa Air and IndiGo – received bomb threats, which later turned out to be hoax calls.
The previous day, seven Indian flights got bomb threats, with at least two of them making emergency landings.