Following the Brussels attack, the city airport went into high alert mode.
Following the Brussels attack, the city airport went into high alert mode. However, the situation got aggravated when an unknown caller called the Mumbai airport and informed officials that as many as 24 flights had people aboard carrying bombs. The same caller called the Mumbai city police control room later and then, several airports in the country, including Dehradun, Amritsar and Chandigarh airports.
This led to three aircrafts having to make emergency landing at other airports. The unknown caller was speaking in fluent English and in a British accent said a security official.
Sources from the Mumbai airport said around 11 am on Tuesday its helpline desk had received the call. The caller said he was calling from America, and has received information from Islamabad that three to four people were travelling on at least 24 flights from the Mumbai airport with time bombs and RDX in order to hijack the aircrafts.
Officials are now trying to track down the VOI internet number from where the call was placed. Sources said some 10 flights from the city airport were delayed. An official said the caller seemed to have a list of flights that takes off from the city airport.
A senior airport official said the message was passed to all the security handling agencies at both terminals. According to Standard Operating Procedure (SOP), a bomb threat assessment committee (BTAC) was formed following the incident.
The central industrial security force (CISF) deployed more officials on the city side of the airport and manual checking of passengers was stepped up. Apart from it Jet Airways received as many as five threat calls in a day on Tuesday.
Sources from the airline said the Delhi-Gorakhpur, Delhi-Chandigarh and Delhi-Dehradun had received threat calls but these flights had landed already, while Delhi-Chennai flight was diverted to Nagpur and one Delhi-Chennai flight passengers had to undergo security check again.
