A reported 90 hoax bomb threats have been made against Indian airlines in the past week, provoking international travel chaos as planes were grounded, diverted and flown to safety by fighter jet escorts.
Indian aviation authorities and criminal investigators have yet to uncover the source and motive of the surge in bomb threats, which are largely being sent via email or posted through anonymous accounts on social media platforms such as X. Major Indian airlines such as Air India, Vistara, SpiceJet and IndiGo have primarily been targeted but American Airlines, Jet Blue and Air New Zealand have also had threats that led to flights being diverted.
India’s air travel sector has been booming, with domestic air traffic carrying 152 million passengers in 2023. Over the past week, passengers have been left enraged as their travel has been delayed, sometimes by days, and airlines are facing huge financial losses. The scale of the threats over the past week is far beyond anything India’s aviation industry has had to deal with before. Between 2014 and 2017, Indian flights received about 120 bomb threats in total.