Civil Aviation Minister Ram Mohan Naidu Kinjarapu on Monday addressed the issue of recent hoax bomb calls on both domestic and international flights, saying the ministry has thought of potential legislative action to counter the threat. Addressing a press conference here on Monday, he said, “From the Ministry, we have thought of some legislative action if it is required.”
He further laid down the action plan being considered to tackle the issue of hoax bomb calls, including putting the people behind this on no-flying list. “We have come to the conclusion that there are two areas that we can explore: 1) Amendment in Aircraft Security Rules…one of the ideas that we want to propagate by changing these rules is that once we catch hold of the perpetrator who is behind this, we want to put them in the no-flying list; 2) Suppression of Unlawful Acts Against Safety of Civil Aviation Act,” he added.
The minister’s remarks came after around 100 flights, including domestic and international, received bomb threats in the last one week. While the threats turned out to be hoax, they disrupted flight services, causing inconvenience to hundreds of passenger.
Besides the hoax bomb threat issue, Kinjarapu also announced the government’s vision to extend the UDAN (Ude Desh Ka Aam Nagrik) scheme for another 10 years. The scheme, aimed at making air travel more accessible to the common man, has been lauded for its role in connecting remote and underserved areas of India.
“We are envisioning the UDAN scheme for further more 10 years. We want to take it forward for 10 years because in the next 5 years, we are planning to start 50 more airports or enhance the capacity of existing airports. Upto 2047, we feel that we have the capacity to increase the airports to more than 200. We have 157 today and we can take it up to 350,” he stated.
Speaking on the success of UDAN, the minister highlighted its transformative impact, saying “UDAN scheme has been a revolutionary scheme in civil aviation. It came out from the thought process of PM Narendra Modi who wanted to democratize air travel.”