Smelly onions onboard possibly led to return of Sharjah flight to Kochi

A combination of “pungent” and “burning smell” inside an Air India Express flight forced about 175 passengers bound for Sharjah to return after takeoff from here.

The culprit — possibly a box of onions in the cargo hold area of the flight. At first, one of the passengers on the Sharjah-bound Air India Express flight (IX 411) that took off from here on August 2 night, complained of a smell of something “burning” inside the flight, an airline source said. Later, some more passengers joined and said there was some “pungent smell” in the flight that had just taken off, forcing a turn around and making a precautionary landing at the Cochin International Airport (CIAL) here.