A Canadian Air Force aircraft is ferrying 191 stranded passengers of an Air India flight from Iqaluit airport to Chicago on Wednesday, a day after the flight was diverted to the airport owing to a bomb threat.
The aircraft departed from Iqaluit at 3.54 am UTC (9.30 am IST) and is expected to land in Chicago at around 7.48 am UTC (1.15 pm IST). Air India’s Boeing 777-300 ER aircraft enroute to Chicago from Delhi was diverted to the Canadian airport following a bomb threat on Tuesday. It had 211 people, including 20 crew members.
At least 10 Indian flights have received hoax bomb threats in the last 48 hours, an issue over which a Parliamentary Standing Committee and the Ministry of Civil Aviation will meet at 11 am.
Apart from the Air India Delhi-Chicago flight, the Dammam-Lucknow IndiGo flight, Ayodhya-Bengaluru Air India Express, a SpiceJet flight from Darbhanga to Mumbai (SG116), an Akasa Air flight from Bagdogra to Bengaluru (QP 1373) an Alliance Air Amritsar-Dehradun-Delhi flight (9I 650) and an Air India Express flight (IX 684) from Madurai to Singapore also received bomb threats on Tuesday.
On Monday, two IndiGo and one Air India flight received hoax threats. These included an Air India flight AI119 from Mumbai to New York’s JFK Airport, and IndiGo flight 6E1275 bound for Muscat, and flight 6E56 heading to Jeddah.
The fake bomb threats were made from an unverified X handle and the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS) is investigating the matter.