Bipasha Basu has suffered many traumatic events, but what happened yesterday on her trip to New York is something she will never forget.

Thanks to the foiled terror attacks in the UK on Thursday, Basu was stranded at Heathrow airport for six hours before her flight finally took off for New York. She spills the beans on her nightmarish experience.



Mid-air mayhem

Says Bipasha, “We were in transit (USA via London) when one of the cabin crew got a call from Australia asking if we were fine. That’s when we got to know that there was news of terrorists planting bombs in the planes. Rocky and I made some calls and one of the first calls was to my mom. She was panicking when I spoke to her.�

Once the plane landed at Heathrow airport, she discovered that the airport was packed with stranded passengers.

“We could see the crowds from the plane itself. We were not allowed to disembark from the aircraft but had to wait in the plane for six hours,� says Bipasha, adding, “Ours was an Air India flight, that’s why we could reach New York. I heard that most of the American and British airlines were still stuck at the airport. We landed in New York at 9.30 pm. We would have landed earlier but there was heavy rush at the airport and clearance took a lot of time.�

The trauma

How did her friends and family react? Bipasha shudders, “It’s scary to think that you can get blown off mid-air! My mom, who had no news of what was happening to me, was frantic till I called her up and told her I was safe.

We were getting messages from people asking if we were all right, and that’s when it struck us how terrible the situation was. We could have had a bomb in the plane and would have been blown apart without us even knowing about it.�

Security risks

But Bipasha is all praise for the security arrangements at international airports. “The security measures are fantastic but it’s frightening to think that terrorists can still get past them. No matter how many precautions you take, your life is still exposed to risk.

According to the new safety rules, the aircraft crew was carrying transparent plastic bags with passports and other important papers in it.

Thanks to the rules, we are not allowed to carry any kind of liquids as the terrorists had planned to plant liquid explosives. Our luggage was checked thoroughly.

Travelling has become very dangerous nowadays. Anything can happen anywhere…� says the actress, before signing off. She returns to Mumbai on August 18.