Bhubaneswar: Reacting to the series of hoax bomb threats received by various airlines on domestic and international routes in last two days, Director of Biju Patnaik International Airport (BPIA) Prasanna Pradhan said the impact of the fake calls did not affect flight services in Bhubaneswar. "The hoax bomb threat in Delhi did not affect timings of arrivals and departures of flights in Bhubaneswar Airport. However, it is important to stress here that all registered airports have a bomb threat contigency plan in place to deal with such situations." 

Pradhan went on to say that the Bureau of Civil Aviation approves the contigency plan and accordingly, all stakeholders like security agencies and airport authorities take needful measures and execute their responsibilities. Usually in such situations, the passengers as well as airport authorities face much difficulty as there's a potential threat to lives. The Bomb Threat Assessment Committee is informed and the veracity of the threat examined. If found to be true, all flights are scanned, all baggages of passengers checked and all this leads to flight delays which pose much inconvenience for people. 

The Law Enforecement Agency looks into the hoax bomb threats but even if it turns to be fake, we execute all precautionary measures at our end to rule out any risk, he added. 

Atleast 10 bomb threats were received by various Indian airlines on domestic and international routes, all found to be hoaxes. On Monday, three international flights originating from Mumbai received bomb threats. While a New York-bound Air India flight was rescheduled and diverted to New Delhi, the other two Indigo flights to Muscat and Jeddah were delayed by several hours as the planes were moved to isolation bays for security checks. The following day, seven Indian flights received bomb threats with two of them making emergency landings. 

The Delhi-Chicago Air India flight, the Jaipur-Bengaluru Air India Express, the Dammam-Lucknow IndiGo flight, the Darbhanga-Mumbai SpiceJet flight, the Siliguri-Bengaluru Akasa Air flight, an Alliance Air Amritsar-Dehradun-Delhi flight and an Air India Express flight from Madurai to Singapore were the seven flights that got bomb threats.

Following the disruption caused by the barrage of fake bomb threats, the Ministry of Home Affairs directed the Ministry of Civil Aviation, Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), Bureau of Civil Aviation, National Investigation Agency (NIA) and Intelligence Bureau (IB) to submit a report in this regard.

A senior official at the Ministry said the investigation will be monitored by the central intelligence agency to find out if it was a conspiracy to damage the reputation Indian aviation sector. He also added that they have also alerted cyber units to be on alert and track social media accounts posting threats. "Most of the accounts that have posted threats were found to be operated from outside the country. They have got these accounts suspended as soon they come to notice," he told mediapersons. 

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