Aviation Security Bureau Summons Airline CEOs For Meeting On Bomb Threats

Amid the slew of hoax bomb threats received by Indian Airlines, Bureau of Civil Aviation Security has summoned chief executive officers of all airline companies for a meeting in Delhi.

Citing sources, NDTV on Saturday reported that with flights operated by Indian airlines receiving an unprecedented 70 bomb threats in six days, aviation safety body Bureau of Civil Aviation Security has called the chief executive officers of the airlines for a meeting and that DGCA and BCAS may issue new guidelines very soon.

Officials told NDTV that a meeting will be held with the CEOs of the airlines in New Delhi and a date will be announced soon. They said that, in the investigation so far, they have found that the IP addresses from which some of the threats were made were from London, Germany, Canada and the US. They did not, however, rule out the use of VPN by the people who made the threats to hide their actual locations. 

Earlier this week, Civil Aviation Minister K Rammohan Naidu Wednesday said the government is closely monitoring the situation due to bomb threats to flights and asserted that all necessary measures are taken against such activities.

'We are closely monitoring the situation and ensuring that we are committed to maintaining the highest security standards and passenger safety remains our topmost priority,' he said in a statement.

On Oct. 17, five Air India flights and two Indigo flights received bomb threats. One Air India flight from Mumbai to London declared an emergency after the threat was reported.

The two Indigo flights affected were 6E 118, operating from Lucknow to Pune, and 6E 18, flying from Istanbul to Mumbai. In the past three days, 12 flights, including those on international routes, have been affected due to the hoax bomb calls.

The police said the threat messages came from Rajnandgaon in Chhattisgarh. They suspect that a minor, currently in custody, posted the tweet. Investigators noted that authorities first received information about the threats on the morning of Oct. 14.