警方呼吁严厉打击报假案

Since August three Chinese airlines received threatening calls which disrupted the operations of five flights. All the threats have turned out to be false after security checks were carried out. The suspects have been either fined a small amount of money or detained for several days as punishments.

In one case, a passenger was detained for ten days and fined 500 yuan or about 80 US dollars after claiming to possess a bomb just before his plane was about to take off in the southern city of Sanya.

Li Xiaojin is a professor at the Civil Aviation University of China, based in the northern city of Tianjin.

He says the punishments are too lenient to deter others who might attempt to make similar threats in the future.

"There are general terms in the current civil aviation law and regulations. But they are not specific enough regarding punishments for hoax terror threats. I think hasher punishments should be given to those who make fake threats to disrupt flights. The punishments could include economic compensation, administrative sanctions and even criminal charges. Moreover, affected passengers should sue the perpetrators to seek compensation."

According to China's criminal and civil aviation laws, those who intentionally spread false information to disrupt flights can receive a jail term of no more than five years. If serious consequences occur, the jail term can be more than five years.

But such cases have been dealt with leniently in practice, as it's difficult to define the degree of consequence caused by the threats.

Li adds that any minor potential security threats to civil aviation should be dealt with as seriously as they are in the United States.

"Punishments are very harsh for those breaching civil aviation security in many foreign countries. Two years ago, a Chinese student was arrested and charged after breaching security at a US airport."

In early 2010, Chinese student Jiang Haisong passed under a rope and entered a restricted area at an airport in the state of New Jersey to kiss his girlfriend goodbye.

He was arrested and a court sentenced him 100 hours of community service and fined him 500 US dollars.

Meanwhile, Wang Hongwei, a public security expert at the Beijing-based Remin University, calls for improved public awareness of civil aviation safety as the sector grows rapidly in China.

"Relevant law enforcement departments should further promote public awareness of the extreme importance of civil aviation safety. The public should be better informed and educated to follow the code of security in the civil aviation sector."

Civil aviation has been rapidly expanding in China in recent years.

Figures from the Civil Aviation Administration of China showed that passengers from home and abroad made about 300 million trips via the country's civil aviation system last year, up 9.5 percent year on year.

For CRI, I'm Zhou Jingnan.