Madrid // Passengers on a flight to Riyadh from Madrid were evacuated on Thursday after a note that read "11:30 bomb" was found pinned to the inside of the aircraft with a knife.
The Saudi Arabian Airlines flight had been due to take off at 0950 GMT but the captain requested an evacuation after the note was discovered and the aircraft was taken to an isolated place in the airport. There were no disruptions to airport services throughout the investigation.
A spokesman for the Guardia Civil police force, who declined to be named, said there were 97 passengers and 15 crew members on board the SVA 226 flight.
"Security forces and rescue services are mobilised. The plane was isolated and passengers evacuated," said a spokeswoman for AENA, the group that manages airports in Spain.
It is still unclear whether the bomb threat was real or not.
But in recent months several airlines have been hit by hoax threats as jitters over extremist attacks continue, particularly since a Russian passenger jet crashed in October over the Sinai peninsula, with the extremist group ISIL claiming to have downed it.
In January, an Indian passenger plane was forced to make an emergency landing in the country's western city of Nagpur after a hoax bomb threat.
Later that month, a Scandinavian Airlines plane carrying 72 people from London to Stockholm was diverted to Gothenburg and the passengers evacuated, due to a bomb threat which turned out to be false.
* Agence France-Presse
http://ift.tt/1Ks6nXj
3Novices Europe
No comments:
Post a Comment