BENGALURU: An Indian passenger aircraft was diverted on Wednesday after the latest in a string of hoax bomb threats made to airline companies involving the country.
The Akasa Air flight, which was flying from India’s capital New Delhi to the southern city of Bengaluru, “received a security alert” and the flight was ordered to return as a “precaution”.
Akasa Air said emergency response teams were monitoring the situation and that the captain had followed “all required emergency procedures for a safe landing in Delhi”.
The flight had 184 people on board, including three infants, the airline said, with the plane landing safely back in New Delhi.
Another flight, the domestic carrier IndiGo flying from Mumbai to New Delhi, was diverted to Ahmedabad in Gujarat.
Zulfiquar Hasan, director-general of the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS), told the Times of India newspaper that “Indian skies are absolutely safe” and said police were working to identify the culprits.
“We are confident of tracing all those behind these threat messages and very strict action under law will be taken,” Hasan told the newspaper.
Indian newspapers reported 13 domestic and international flights have received bomb threats since Monday, including some messages posted on social media. All have been false alarms.
Singapore scrambled fighter jets on Tuesday to escort an Air India Express plane after an email warning about a possible bomb on board, the city-state’s defence minister said.
Two F-15 jets were deployed to escort the aircraft “away from populated areas” before it landed safely at Changi Airport late on Tuesday.
Air India also said on Tuesday that one of its planes from New Delhi to Chicago had to make an emergency landing in Canada because of “a security threat posted online”.
That flight also landed safely at Canada’s far northern city of Iqaluit.
Canada’s armed forces later airlifted the passengers to Chicago, Canada’s Minister of Defence Bill Blair said on X.
Similar hoaxes were received this week by India’s low-cost operator IndiGo regarding two flights that were to take off, to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia and to Muscat in Oman, according to Indian media.
Sky marshals to be doubled
With the growing number of calls claiming a threat to flights, the federal government has decided to double the number of sky marshals on flights originating from airports across the country.
A senior official from the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) confirmed to ANI news agency that the decision to double the number of air marshals has been taken recently after assessment of the growing threat and getting inputs from intelligence agencies.
“The fresh batch of air marshals will be deployed on new international routes added in sensitive category based on intelligence report. The decision was taken after several rounds of meetings will all stakeholders in aviation security,” the officer added.
A unit of the National Security Guard (NSG) specialised in anti-terror and anti-hijacking measures is deployed as air marshals mainly on international routes and a few sensitive domestic routes.
Sky marshals are armed plainclothes security officers who travel on passenger aircraft.
In India, sky marshals or flight marshals were introduced in 1999 after the hijacking of the flight Air India IC 814 in Kandahar to prevent hijacking in future.
Sky marshals travel with loaded firearms/weapons in passenger (commercial) aircraft and can also take action in the aircraft to prevent hijacking.
As per reports, flights bound for Kabul in Afghanistan Kathmandu in Nepal, Colombo in Sri Lanka, certain routes in Canada and a few other routes in Middle East countries are termed sensitive routes. The number of sky marshals per flight ranges from two to six, depending upon the threat perception.
Ministry of Civil Aviation has called a high-level meeting after more than 10 bomb threats have been received on social media on Monday and Tuesday.
According to the sources, Minister of Civil Aviation Ram Mohan Naidu on Monday held a meeting with the Bureau of Civil Aviation, CISF and other senior officials in airport security over the bomb threats.
