'23 incidents of spotting flying objects near airports'

There have been 21 incidents of flying objects being spotted near airports in 2016 and 2 such cases so far this year, the government said today.
Asked whether the government is aware of recurrence of incidents of flying objects being spotted near airports, including in Delhi, which poses a grave threat to airplanes, Union Minister Jayant Sinha replied in the affirmative.
"There have been 21 incidents in 2016 and 2 incidents in the current year so far," he said in a written reply to the Lok Sabha.
A standard operating procedure (SOP) for handling of sub-conventional aerial platform threats in the country has been issued by the home ministry.

In a separate written reply, the minister of state for civil aviation said no full body scanner is presently operational at the Indira Gandhi International Airport here.
According to him, a trial run test of whole body scanners was conducted at IGI Airport for performance evaluation from the security point of view and the trial run was made optional to passengers.
"The full body scanner works on the Millimeter Wave (MMW) technology and has privacy filters. It does not give out the exact body contours of a flier under inspection at the scanner, but puts out a generic mannequin figure depicting aberrations on an individual's body," he noted.