It was plane confusion

new delhi: despite the official clearing of air, there appear to be 52 versions of what happened to alliance air flight cd 7444. related links some passengers maintained they knew almost right from the beginning that it was security drill (which it wasn't, really). others said they got to know that later, and complained that it was wrong to subject the passengers to such a long `mock' hijacking.``at the most, it should have been an hour,'' shiv sena mp chandrakant khaire said after getting off the plane. a few even insisted that the hijacking had been for real. national security guard commandos actually apprehended ``two hijackers,'' roughed them even, they said. but most passengers emerging from the plane admitted they never saw any hijackers during the entire episode. one man confessed he initially mistook the commandos for hijackers. when the flight landed at delhi, the passengers on board -- there were 46 of them, plus six crew members -- were first told that there was a technical snag. that's why the aircraft doors could not be opened, they were told. the passengers were asked to remain in their seats. apparently, till this time, the pilots believed there were real hijackers on board, but had put out the technical snag version to keep the passengers calm. later, they announced that it was a ``mock'' exercise. had it not been for their mobile phones, may passengers might have just sat through the ``technical snag'' and the ``mock drill.'' k n jain didn't know that his plane, sitting on the tarmac, had been `hijacked.' his brother vinod jain learnt that from television and called him up in the aircraft. a while later, reporters themselves were phoning the passengers inside. the times of india got a call from inside, informing that the plane had been hijacked. though no one on the phone appeared to have actually seen the hijackers, civil aviation secretary a h jung knew there were two of them. and also that their english was not too good, as he told a television channel. appropriately enough, the nsg by then were moving in. the fire brigade was on alert. civil aviation minister shahnawaz hussain, new to the beat, was cutting his teeth. camera teams were pestering worried relatives for bytes. and a few kilometres away the crisis management group was in a meeting to solve a crisis that never really was.