The Indian Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) is set to implement harsher penal measures to address hoax security threats after a series of bomb threats that affected airlines’ operations this week. In about 48 hours, 13 airlines, with some of the international ones included, received bomb threats, and most of them proved to be false. These threats led to the distortion of some flights and others being compelled to shift their routes, and passengers were screened again, thus incurring unwanted delays. A senior official told a news agency on Thursday that the ministry is contemplating putting all such offenders of bomb threats on the no-fly list.
In light of these acts, MoCA is assessing the changes in the existing rules, especially those under the BCAS, to make sure escalated punitive measures will be meted out to the offenders. Another of the pending propositions is to put the culprits on the no-fly list, which means that they will be unable to fly with any airline in the future. Besides, the ministry is consulting lawyers to find out how the current rules may be changed in order to accommodate these changes.
It has also been researching options for handling hoax bomb threats in other countries in a bid to create stronger measures within the ministry. Other measures could also include a review of existing laws in order to come up with better ways of preventing people from making such threats, especially through social media.
When writing this paper, Indian aviation regulations have provided very few methods to deal with bomb threats from external sources like social networks. However, there are standard measures and sanctions governing various forms of misconduct of misbehaving passengers on a flight. Through policy changes, MoCA seeks to reduce the dangers posed to air travel by hoax threats by increasing appropriate regulations.
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