India’s aviation sector under threat
Hoax bomb threats can wreak havoc on the Indian aviation sector since they are not easy to trace. Given the Khalistani threats to airlines, the government or airlines can’t take such calls lightly even if they think these to be hoax calls. The hoax threat comes right in the middle of festive season when a large number of Indians plan to fly. No big airline that has been a victim of these threats in the last few days commented on this issue. “This is the peak festive rush season and we don’t want to create a scare among travellers. Suffice it to say that this is a sort of financial terrorism against airlines and should be dealt with severely,” said a senior airline official.
Flight bookings to popular domestic destinations have increased by 60%, leading to fully booked hotels across many regions, ET reported a week ago. Bookings to popular international destinations such as Thailand and Georgia are also up by 70-80%, industry data shows. “Travel has become a necessity. The upcoming festival season is witnessing strong demand for both domestic and international trips,” Rajeev Kale, country head for leisure travel and MICE at Thomas Cook (India), told ET.
Airfares on specific, high-demand routes have seen a year-on-year increase of up to 25%, industry executives have told ET. Aloke Bajpai, Group CEO of ixigo, told ET that airfares for specific routes such as Bengaluru to Lucknow, Bengaluru to Jaipur, and Delhi to Varanasi have seen a year-on-year increase of 20-25% even as average airfares across key routes are down 20-25% for the last week of October, ahead of Diwali.
Airlines have said this quarter will be their best, as greater demand for both hometowns and leisure destination bookings will see travellers swelling during this festive season compared to the previous year. “This year, people are looking to travel to holiday destinations during Durga Puja and Diwali. We expect this festive season followed by the winter travel season to be one of the best for the industry,” an executive of a private airline had told ET early this month.
The hoax bomb threats might scare travellers, causing airlines to miss out on a high-demand period. By disrupting flights, hoax calls also cause heavy financial losses to airlines. The total cost of one hoax threat works out roughly to over Rs 3 crore, senior officials have told TOI.
If a flight has to be diverted soon after take-off due to a bomb threat, there is the problem of excess landing weight, as per industry executives. Landing within two hours means dumping about 100 tons of fuel to reduce the weight for landing. The fuel wastage cost alone works out to Rs 1 crore. Add to it other expenses like the unexpected landing and parking charges at airport, putting up passengers and crew in hotels, compensating passengers later for missed connections, grounding of aircraft before it can be back in service after thorough checks and arranging a fresh pair of operating crew.
No clear solution in sight yet
Most of the hoax threat messages and calls are made using VPN which makes it difficult to trace them. Police have intensified their investigation into several hoax bomb threats targeted at domestic and international flights.
“It is suspected that the handler used VPN (virtual private network) or dark web browser to set up the accounts on X and then posted the messages from more than one account,” a Delhi Police officer told TOI. “To get the IP addresses, we have written to the social media platform,” the officer added. According to some reports, many bomb threats to Indian flights have been traced to IP addresses in London and Germany.
The government says it is working on putting people issuing such hoax messages on the no fly list. The Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS) had this June proposed to the Union aviation ministry that people making hoax threats to flights and other aviation-linked infra be put on no fly list. “BCAS had not identified the relevant law to base this move on. We will work it out,” a senior aviation ministry official told TOI.
(With inputs from TOI)