What has happened so far?

Indian airlines have received over 250 bomb threats from anonymous social media accounts in the last two weeks. All the threats have turned out to be fake. This is an outrageous number, as in the past 10 years, the number of such calls has been only 120. The threat calls have been issued to Air India, Vistara, IndiGo, Akasa Air, Alliance Air, SpiceJet, and Star Air.

Such calls seem to originate from social media accounts specifically created for this purpose. Tracing their IP addresses has not amounted to much, as they have been found to be in Europe. This can possibly be due to VPNs, and the perpetrators might be operating from within the country itself. The motives can vary, from simple prank calls to intentional disruption of the airlines’ operations. A 17 year-old from Chhattisgarh who posted 19 such threats, has admitted that he did so to implicate a person with whom he had a business dispute. On Saturday, Delhi Police arrested a young man who had allegedly posted two threats. The calls have led to widespread disruption in flight schedules, causing huge financial losses to airlines and inconvenience to passengers and crew members.

How do such threats affect the airlines?

More than 150 million domestic passengers were served by the Indian aviation industry last year. Such a sheer number, along with industry guidelines, means that every threat must be taken seriously by the airlines. Doing so does

not only mean grounding the flight

and evacuating the passengers, but also coordinating with security crew and the airports nearest to the aircraft at the time the threat is received. This, along with the cost of grounding the aircraft, rescheduling flights, dumping aviation fuel mid-air to reduce the load as the aeroplanes return to the airport, changing the cabin crew, passenger accommodation, and other such aspects can cause significant financial losses to the airlines. As per reports, the latest disruptions have already cost Indian airlines over Rs 600 crore.

Protocol for handling such threats

When a bomb threat is received, there are two scenarios. If the flight is yet to take off, the plane is moved to a secured bay and checked thoroughly. The passengers’ baggage is also screened. If received mid-air, the airport-specific Bomb Threat Assessment Committee (BTAC) receives an alert. The BTAC comprises representatives of the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS), the airline concerned, and the airport operator. The BTACs of the departure and destination airports together determine the legitimacy and severity of the threat. If within the domestic airspace, the aircraft is asked to land at the nearest airport if the threat is deemed “specific” and then is checked by airport security staff after the crew and passengers are evacuated. If the aircraft has left the Indian airspace, Air Traffic Control gets in contact with its foreign counterparts to determine the course of action.

Action taken by the government

The government has told X, Meta, Google and Twitter to promptly share details about the user accounts that post these messages. “The scale of spread of such hoax bomb threats has been observed to be dangerously unrestrained due to the availability of the option of “forwarding/re-sharing/ re-posting/ re-tweeting” on social media platforms,” it said in an advisory on Saturday, and warned they could lose immunity from prosecution for content posted by users, granted under the Information Technology Act, on failure to remove such false warnings. They will also be liable for consequential action under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita 2023 on failure to observe the due diligence obligations.

Meanwhile, the directors of the CSIF and the BCAS have briefed the Union home secretary and discussed ways to tackle the situation on the ground. Per a PTI report, the BTAC protocol on threat classification has been tweaked and a “fine assessment, acting on a set of new ‘red flags’, is being undertaken now.”

Changes in law, harsher penalties for hoaxers in the works

The government is also planning to tweak the existing laws to deal with bomb hoaxes to airlines and ensure  harsher punishments  to deter such calls. Among the moves in the works are changes to the Aircraft Security Rules and amendments to the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against Safety of Civil Aviation (SUASCA) Act, 1982. This would enable inclusion of those behind hoax bomb threats to the no-fly list, which is maintained only for unruly passengers as of now. The ministry of civil aviation (MoCA) wants the law’s ambit to be expanded in order to deal with bomb threats even when an aircraft is on ground and not operating a flight, and make it a cognisable offence under the Act. The inter-ministerial consultations will be underway soon as MoCA wants the amendments to take effect at the earliest.