Yesterday's bomb hoax highlights need for regular checks by skymarshals on all flights

You risk your life almost every time you board a flight, because sky marshals monitor them only randomly.

The need to deploy them regularly has resurfaced after passenger Sanjay Malik claimed to have a bomb on a Delhi-Mumbai Indigo aircraft (6E 181) and demanded the flight be diverted to Pakistan yesterday.

Trouble: Sanjay Malik claimed he had a bomb on an Indigo flight yesterday

In the absence of sky marshals, passengers had to overpower Sanjay.

Captain Ashok Omar radioed the Mumbai Air Traffic Control about the potential threat at 11.45 am, 15 minutes before landing.

It has been revealed that Sanjay is mentally disturbed.
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Aviation expert Vipul Saxena said, "The fact that terrorists can be anywhere has increased the threat to passengers.

Sky marshals should be made mandatory for all flights."

Mandatory

After the hijack incident in Kandahar in 1999, it had been decided that all flights to sensitive areas like J&K would have sky marshals.

"Passengers are not expected to come to the rescue during such situations," said a retired Bureau of Civil Aviation Security official.

Added Saxena, "The government must be stringent while screening antecedents of sky marshals, as cases of drug smuggling have been reported in USA and a molestation case was reported in India."
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Indigo President Aditya Ghosh said, "The cabin crew treated the incident as a level-1 threat and ensured the safety of passengers."

This is the second bomb hoax incident on Indigo Airlines this year.

A passenger on board Delhi-Mumbai Indigo flight created a scare minutes before it landed in Mumbai claiming there was a bomb on board and demanding that the flight be diverted to Pakistan.