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India's airlines have already received 999 hoax bomb threats this year, Murlidhar Mohol, India's deputy civil aviation minister, said on Thursday.
In written answers to India's upper house, he said the number was almost 10 times more than in the whole of 2023, according to Reuters.
Reuters reported that the false claims were mostly made via social media.
Mohol said that 12 people had been arrested in connection with 256 police complaints filed over hoax bomb threats up until November 14, and that more than 500 threats had been made in the final two weeks of October, more than in the rest of the year combined.
"The recent threats were hoaxes, and no actual threat was detected at any of the airports/aircraft in India," he said.
The spike in incidents has forced planes to be diverted, and has led to rising costs for airlines.
A Boeing 777 flight from Delhi to Chicago in early October was diverted due to what Harjit Sajjan, Canada's minister of emergency preparedness, said at the time was a "bomb threat," stranding more than 200 passengers for over 18 hours at a remote airport.
In mid-October, Singapore's air force dispatched two fighter jets to escort an Air India Express plane away from populated areas after the airline got an email saying a bomb was on board, the country's defense minister said.
Another Air India plane flying from Mumbai to New York was diverted midair to New Delhi in October, The Indian Express reported at the time.
The Times of India, quoting senior officials, said the cost of diverting that plane amounted to more than $354,500.
Osprey Flight Solutions, a private aviation risk company, said there doesn't seem to have been any real threat to aviation, but told Reuters earlier this month that the hoaxes result in increased airport security checks, inflate airlines' financial costs, and cause major concern and distress among passengers.
More than 3,000 flights depart daily from India's airports, according to the country's civil aviation ministry.
