A teenage boy got detained by the Australian Federal Police. The teenager name is Paul Sant. His age is 19. According to an investigation, he has been detained because he has made 16 prank calls to the pilots through flight radios. He uses to hack the flight radios and tell the pilots that to cancel the landing.
On September 5 and November 3 this case happened. According to flight (Virgin Australia) information, the flight came to Tullamarine Airport and Avalon at around 5:19pm. When the flight was about to arrive in the airport for landing, after three minutes the flight appears to raise 3800 feet and it turned towards north-west Melbourne.
This happened because the flight radio was hacked by Paul Sant. He gave wrong information to the pilot through the flight radio. He said “The flight has engine failure and if it will reduce the height to 4500”. The president of Virgin Independent Pilots Australia said “The pilot cannot recognise the voice of the radio speaker and has to obey the order and hence this mistake happened”.
The Australian Federal Police cancelled the bail because the prank done by Paul Sant has made the passenger life in danger and it can cause a big damage to the aircraft. Once Paul Sant has a mayday communication with the aircraft on the national distress frequency, he declared that a flight had crashed into the River Maribyrnong or at a risk of getting crashed.
Australian Federal Police (AFP) incriminated Paul Sant for hacking the private transmission, giving fake news to the ATC and to put human life in danger. He has charged for20 years of prison. Magistrate Jelena Popovic postponed the bail till December 14. Paul Sant has to go through a mental evaluation till the hearing date.