An American Airlines flight from JFK airport to Delhi was forced to divert to Rome — and dramatically landed Sunday under fighter escort — after a bomb threat on board.
The 199 passengers and 15 crew members on American Airlines Flight 292 endured nearly 15 hours stuck on the plane as a result of the scare.
The flight was just two hours from its destination when it made an abrupt U-turn over the Central Asian country of Turkmenistan due to a “possible security issue,” the airline confirmed.
Passengers said the first sign they had that something was wrong was when the captain announced a “diversion due to a security issue,” before the aircraft made a sharp 180-degree turn away from the Indian capital and back towards Europe.
This is the view inside an Italian Air Force fighter jet escorting an American Airlines flight following a bomb threat.
The plane was traveling from New York to New Delhi and was diverted to Rome Sunday due to a bomb threat. pic.twitter.com/IKvfMz44rb
— Gage Goulding – KPRC 2 (@GageGoulding) February 23, 2025
“I felt a little panic of, OK, what’s going on here?” passenger Neeraj Chopra, who was traveling from his home in Detroit, Michigan to visit family in India, told the Associated Press.
The plane diverted due to a possible bomb on board, the Italian Air Force confirmed.
Jaw-dropping images on social media showed the Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner being tailed by two Italian Eurofighter Typhoon warplanes.
In total, passengers were stuck in the air for 14 hours and 45 minutes before they finally landed at Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci Airport.
“It was definitely the longest flight to Europe I’ve ever taken,” passenger Jonathan Bacon, 22, from Dayton Ohio, told AP.
He said that once they had landed, all the passengers were loaded onto buses with their luggage and underwent additional security screenings inside the terminal.
They were still waiting for their checked baggages more than two hours after they had landed.
“Safety and security are our top priorities and we thank our customers for their understanding,” American Airlines said in a statement. “We are working closely with local authorities and will provide updates as the situation develops.”
The plane left New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport at around 8:30 p.m. ET on Saturday for the 14-hour flight to India’s capital.
It landed in Rome at about 11:15 a.m. ET Sunday after making a massive loop back to Europe.
The incident comes less than two weeks after an American Airlines plane was evacuated and then delayed for nearly five hours in Texas because a passenger had a Wi-Fi hotspot titled, “There is a bomb on the flight.”
