India is experiencing a huge surge in bomb threats to its airlines and airports, with nearly a thousand hoaxes throughout 2024 causing chaos for flyers and costing thousands.
In the three years between 2014 and 2017, Indian authorities recorded 120 bomb hoax alerts at the country’s airports, with 50% of them aimed at the major hubs of Delhi and Mumbai.
Ten-fold increase in hoaxes year-on-year
That may not seem like a huge proportion of affected flights, considering that more than 3,000 incoming and outgoing flights are handled in the country’s over 150 operational airports, every day, serving 150 million domestic a year.
But the number of fake bomb warnings is increasing. The country’s deputy civil aviation minister Murlidhar Mohol told parliament that 999 bomb threats had been recorded by airlines and airports in the year to 14 November, a figure that has risen ten-fold since 2023.
And in an unusual spike, the vast majority of those, over 500, were made in the last two weeks of October alone. While Mohol specified that there had been “no actual threat detected at any of the airports/aircraft in India” he said that 12 people have been arrested in connection with the threats.
Threats to a series of airlines in October included 162 to IndiGo, 150 to Vistara, and 67 to Akasa, as well as 154 to Air India, with one resulting in an Air India Express flight being escorted by Singaporean fighter jets. Following that, India’s civil aviation ministry sought to reassure flyers, saying had it was protecting the sector with “every possible effort”.
Huge deployment of resources for each threat
Those efforts include threat analysis by India’s Bomb Threat Assessment Committees which assess and respond to security incidents, leading to the deployment of various resources such as ambulances and doctors, bomb disposal teams, police and sniffer dogs. That all costs money, as do the resulting delays to flight schedules, as passengers are deplaned and rescreened, along with baggage, including cabin, checked and cargo items. Planes are not cleared for take off again until engineering and security inspections have taken place.
“Hoax bomb threats result in adversely affecting operations of some of the flights resulting in impact on airlines and airports,” Mohol said. He told parliamentarians that the “concerned agencies” had been notified about “taking appropriate remedial action.” That means stakeholders taking steps to “streamline security measures”, as well as implementing “advanced technology at airports and increasing security personnel training” – actions which Mohol said would need constant review.
