50 flights receive bomb threats on Monday; 3 IndiGo flights diverted to airports in Middle East

New Delhi: Around 50 domestic and international flights received bomb threats on Tuesday while another 30 got threats on Monday night, with three Jeddah-bound flights getting diverted to airports in Saudi Arabia's Riyadh and Medina and Qatar's capital Doha, officials said.

With this, airlines have received around 170-180 threat messages since October 14 even as the government said it is planning to identify threat messages to airlines as cognisable offence and put such callers in no-fly list.

Twenty-three each flights of IndiGo and Air India, 21 of Vistara received the bomb threats. At least 12 flights of Akasa Air have also received threats.

IndiGo's flights included Mangaluru to Mumbai, Ahmedabad to Jeddah, Lucknow to Pune, Hyderabad to Jeddah, Istanbul to Mumbai, Delhi to Dammam, Bengaluru to Jeddah, Istanbul to Delhi, Kozhikode to Jeddah, Delhi to Jeddah.

Of this, the Bengaluru to Jeddah flight was redirected to Doha while the Kozhikode to Jeddah flight was redirected to Riyadh. The Delhi to Jeddah flight was redirected to Medina, statements issued by IndiGo said.

It also included Bengaluru to Lucknow, Aizawl to Kolkata, Kolkata to Bengaluru, Mumbai to Istanbul, Kolkata to Jaipur, Kolkata to Ahmedabad, Hyderabad to Jodhpur, Lucknow to Goa, Goa to Ahmedabad, Pune to Dehradun and Surat to Goa.

"The safety and security of our customers and crew remains paramount in all facets of our operations. We worked closely with the relevant authorities, and standard operating procedures were followed," IndiGo said.

An Air India spokesperson also said some of their flights received threats and they followed the laid down protocols and alerted relevant authorities and adhered to all security procedures strictly. It did not share the details of the flights which received threats.

Vistara said a few of its flights that operated received security threats on social media following which authorities were informed.