Confusion over who is leading probe into WestJet hoax calls
Canadian law enforcement agencies couldn’t seem to agree Thursday on who should take the lead investigating a series of bomb threats — all fake — against WestJet flights over the past week.
Should it be the local police agency where the flights were forced to land or where the threat originated? Or should the Royal Canadian Mounted Police oversee all of the cases?
The confusion over jurisdiction is likely not the news officials want to hear at WestJet, which likely has been dinged thousands or tens of thousands of dollars for each of the diverted planes.
Bryce Fisher, an aviation consultant and former Transport Canada regulator, said he assumed the Mounties would take the lead since civil aviation is a federal matter and the threats targeted the same airline.
“It wouldn’t make sense for disparate police forces to be investigating threats against the same airline,” he said.
But Staff Sgt. Julie Gagnon, a national RCMP spokeswoman, said the investigations were being handled by police in the “jurisdiction of where the emergency landings took place.”
Yet when the National Post contacted those local police agencies, that wasn’t necessarily the case.
In Calgary, where a Vancouver-Toronto flight was forced to make an emergency landing Wednesday, police said they were still trying to determine whether they or the RCMP would take the lead in the investigation.
In Saskatoon, where a Halifax-Edmonton flight was forced to make an emergency landing Saturday, the local force said the investigation had been passed to the Ontario Provincial Police because the threat originated in Ontario.
However, Saskatoon police said they were investigating a bogus threat Tuesday against a Toronto-Saskatoon flight that landed safely in Saskatoon because it was received by the Saskatoon Airport Authority.
In Winnipeg, where an Edmonton-Toronto flight was forced to make an emergency landing Monday, police said Manitoba RCMP were handling the investigation.
In Victoria, where a flight bound for that city from Las Vegas landed after being the subject of a threat Thursday night, the RCMP in Sidney/North Saanich were handling the initial investigation.
None of the investigating agencies had any new information on Thursday.
“Our main priority remains to identify the origin of the call and person(s) responsible,” Manitoba RCMP spokesman Bert Paquet said by email.
Officials would not say whether investigators suspect the same person could be behind all four threats. Calgary-based WestJet also declined to speculate.
Investigators are likely looking for any disgruntled passengers or employees who could be behind the hoaxes, but there could be any number of other motivations, experts said.
Fisher recalled a case in which a series of threats were tied to someone who turned out to be a voyeuristic thrill-seeker. He would perch on a hill above the airport and watch as authorities responded to a threat against a plane.
In another case, a first-responder made threatening calls against airlines so he could rack up overtime pay.
The bomb threat that forced the Edmonton-bound flight to divert to Saskatoon was received by Blake Evans, manager of the Kincardine Municipal Airport in Ontario.
The caller was male, and said in a matter-of-fact voice there was a bomb in the baggage compartment, Evans recalled Thursday. He said he pressed for more information, but the man hung up.
Each time an airline has to make an emergency landing, it can incur significant costs in landing fees, burning extra fuel, and repositioning crew and aircraft.
It can also be costly for police and firefighters who have to deploy bomb-detection and disposal teams, as well as personnel to help in evacuating and interviewing crew and passengers.
Carmi Levy, an independent technology analyst in London, Ont., said pranksters are increasingly exploiting technology that allows people to make conventional phone calls using Internet-based telephone services or apps. Some online tools allow callers to mask their phone numbers.
“The barriers between traditional phone service and online services are increasingly meaningless, and individuals who perpetrate these crimes are becoming ever more adept at exploiting the fuzzy border between old and new technology,” he said.