Passengers assault co-traveller on Thai Smile’s Bangkok-Kolkata flight

A group of passengers slapped another traveller onboard a ThaiSmile aircraft at least 20 times, pull

A group of passengers slapped another traveller onboard a ThaiSmile aircraft at least 20 times, pulled his hair, and punched him as their flight was getting ready for take-off from Bangkok to Kolkata. Yet the airline didn’t deem the incident a security risk and decided to resume the journey after a short delay.

According to the incident report filed by the airline, on December 26 at around 5 pm local time, a bunch of passengers assaulted a co-traveller as the flight was getting ready for take-off after the latter refused to follow safety instructions by the cabin crew and straighten his seatback.

The Indian Air Force (IAF) on Thursday successfully fired the Extended Range (ER) version of BrahMos air-launched supersonic cruise missile against a ship target from a SU-30MKI fighter aircraft.

“The missile achieved the desired mission objectives in the Bay of Bengal region. With this, IAF has achieved a significant capability boost to carry out precision strikes from SU-30MKI aircraft against land/sea targets over very long ranges,” the IAF said in a statement.

The extended range capability of the missile coupled with the high performance of the SU-30MKI aircraft gives the IAF a strategic reach and allows it to dominate the future battle fields, the IAF added.

The current air-launched missile weighs 2.65 tonnes, which will come down to 1.33 tonnes with the BrahMos-NG (Next Generation) that is under development. With this a SU-30MKI will be able to carry up to four BrahMos-NG missiles, while the Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) will be able to carry two missiles, as reported by The Hindu earlier.

A negative COVID report will be a must for passengers arriving in India from China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Thailand from January 1, Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya said on December 29.