Enough Is Enough! BCAS Mulls 5 Year Flying Ban For Bomb Hoax Calls

Amid rising cases of hoax bomb threats to airlines and airports, the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS) said it plans to impose a five-year flying ban on individuals across all airlines who issue such warnings.

The BCAS is expected to propose to the civil aviation ministry the new measure, a News 18 report said, adding that the ban extends to all airlines and for a period of five years.

Frequent Hoax Calls

In the last few days, there have been several instances of hoax calls made to airports as well as airlines.

On Tuesday, about forty one airports -- including in Varanasi, Chennai, Patna, Nagpur and Jaipur, received bomb threat emails -- prompting authorities to scramble contingency measures and carry out anti-sabotage checks that lasted hours, and each of them was found to be a hoax.

A report by news agency PTI said that an online group called 'KNR' is suspected to be behind these hoax threat emails. The group reportedly issued similar emails to several schools in the Delhi-National Capital Region on May 1, the report said citing sources.

Similarly, a day before, the Delhi airport too received an email around 9.30 am that warned of a bomb threat on a Dubai-bound flight but nothing suspicious was found during inspections.

In April too, such hoax emails were sent to several airports. Indian cyber security agencies are working to find the origin of these emails that have been sent from abroad.