With flights operated by Indian airlines receiving an unprecedented 70 bomb threats in six days, aviation safety body Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS) met the chief executive officers (CEOs) of the airlines in New Delhi today.
Officials said that at the meeting, held at the civil aviation ministry’s office in Rajiv Gandhi Bhawan, the CEOs were asked to follow the standard operating procedure (SOP) for tackling such threats, which have been causing inconvenience to passengers and losses to carriers. They were also asked to keep all stakeholders informed about the threats and the action being taken.
Over 30 bomb threats were made against flights operated by different airlines on Saturday alone and officials that, In the investigation so far, they have found that the IP (internet protocol) addresses from which some of the threats were issued this week were from London, Germany, Canada and the US. They did not, however, rule out the use of VPN (virtual private networks) by the people who made the threats to hide their actual locations.
The BCAS and aviation regulator Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), the officials said, are also expected to issue fresh guidelines for airlines to deal with bomb threats. The recent spate of hoax calls and threats made through social media began on Monday and have continued every day since then, causing several flights to be diverted or delayed.
On Saturday, Vistara said five of its flights on international routes received security threats through social media while at least four IndiGo flights received security-related alerts. The other airlines whose flights received threats were Air India, Akasa Air, SpiceJet, Star Air and Alliance Air.
