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Travellers shouldn’t be nervous to fly after bomb threats, expert says

 

A WestJet aircraft is pictured on the tarmac in Ottawa on Thursday. The airline has suffered a rash of threats over the past week, grounding several flights and affecting travel for passengers. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick
A WestJet aircraft is pictured on the tarmac in Ottawa on Thursday. The airline has suffered a rash of threats over the past week, grounding several flights and affecting travel for passengers. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

It hasn’t been smooth sailing for crew and passengers aboard WestJet and Air Canada domestic flights this week. Investigations are underway into five bomb threats that forced a series of emergency landings in four cities across the country. In one incident, St. John's airport officials were also forced to evacuate a building.

But one security expert says passengers shouldn’t be nervous to fly, despite the slew of flight diversions that have taken place across the country since June 25.

“If a terrorist wants to blow up an airplane, they put the bomb on the airplane, they don’t keep calling in,” says Andre Gerolymatos, a history professor at Simon Fraser University who specializes in security and terrorism. “Every time they call, they make the authorities more aware of it and make them much sharper.”

With this past week’s spike in disturbances, WestJet has managed to reduce the time it takes to confirm the hoax. The first, incident, a June 27 WestJet flight from Edmonton to Halifax that landed in Saskatoon after a call had been made claiming an explosive device was on board, took several hours to confirm the threat wasn’t real. The latest incident, a July 1 WestJet flight from Vancouver to Toronto, which was detoured to Calgary after someone called in a bomb threat, took only an hour to confirm.

Gerolymatos speculates the person calling in the threats was someone with a beef against the airline, or with a lot of time to spare.

“The frequency indicates it’s a disgruntled customer or a crazy teenager who’s sitting at home, having fun at the expense of everyone else,” he says. “Or it’s one person that did it, and then another person heard about it and then we have a copycat.”

When an incident like this takes place aboard a flight, Gerolymatos says the protocol is for the airline to notify the closest port authority and the RCMP, who will take over the investigation.

Gerolymatos says before the latest spate of bomb threats, the last such incident to take place in Canada occurred in May 2010, when a Cathay Pacific flight from Hong Kong to Vancouver was forced to land with escorted fighter jets at Vancouver International Airport. Nothing was found aboard the flight.

Transport Canada considers threats made to aircraft a violation of the Criminal Code, which it says the agency takes very seriously. Penalties include heavy fines and jail time.

“Transport Canada will continue to work with law enforcement, airlines and airport authorities to respond to threats to aviation security, and to resolve threat situations safely, efficiently, and with least possible impact to passengers and the aviation system,” says Roxane Marchand of Transport Canada.

According to a website that tracks aviation incidents and accidents in real time, there’s been 18 forced or emergency landings of commercial jets within Canada since the start of this year.

Aviation Global Incident Map shows that most of the unscheduled landings are a result of incidents such as smoke in the cockpit, engine issues, fire sensor malfunctions and problems in the hydraulic system.

Other emergency diversions include a Royal Jordanian Airlines flight from Chicago to Amman having to divert to Montreal because of a sick passenger, and a flight from Qatar to Miami diverting to Gander International so a traveller could give birth.

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