BRITAIN: A passenger aircraft carrying scores of British holidaymakers was forced to make an emergency landing yesterday after a note was found saying there was a bomb on board.
The Boeing 767 en route from London Gatwick to Egypt was escorted into Brindisi airport in southern Italy by an Italian F16 fighter jet. The head of Brindisi police, Salvatore De Paulis, said the discovery of the note in a seat pocket by a passenger prompted the pilot to raise the alarm two hours into the flight.
Anti-terrorist officers and emergency services met the aircraft after it touched down and all the passengers were safely disembarked yesterday afternoon.
The charter flight, operated by the Gatwick-based Excel Airways, had been bound for the Red Sea diving resort of Hurghada.
Passenger Matthew Masters told BBC News 24: "The captain told us he had had a message that there might be a bomb on board. There was a bit of shock." He added: "There is talk of our having to stay the night and then get another plane. We got to Gatwick early and went through all the new security. You'd think we would have been safe."
The bomb scare came on the day British pilots hit out at the government for imposing stringent security measures banning them from taking basic items such as toothpaste or contact lens solution into cockpits, even on long-haul trips.
Subjecting pilots to the same restrictions as passengers made "no sense at all", said the British Airline Pilots' Association.
Mervyn Granshaw, the association's chairman, called for a summit with the UK Department for Transport to address the "endless" problems the new measures have caused. He added: "Do officials really believe we need to be prevented from using liquids, given that we freely load and carry many thousands of litres of volatile aviation kerosene every day? The measure is frankly bizarre."
In the US yesterday, a Pakistani woman whose daughter's carry-on luggage caused an airport to shut down for 9½ hours on Thursday said it was her ethnic background, not a few bottles of suspicious liquids, that caused the security alert.
Initial laboratory testing by the FBI turned up no evidence of explosive materials in the bottles carried at Tri-State Airport in West Virginia by Rima Qayyum (28), a Pakistani woman dressed in traditional Islamic headcover.
No charges were filed against Ms Qayyum, who was never detained and was co-operative when interviewed by the FBI.
Ms Qayyum's mother, Mian Qayyum of Jackson, Michigan, said her daughter is four months pregnant, lives in Barboursville, and is innocent.
"It was not only a false alarm, it was racial discrimination because there was nothing," she said. "They should clear her name and apologise on national TV." The FBI did not return messages last night seeking comment on the allegations.
A baggage screener noticed a bottle in Ms Qayyum's carry-on bag as she was going through security before her 9.15am flight yesterday to Charlotte, North Carolina, airport authority president Jim Booton said.
The terminal was evacuated at 11.25am after two bottles of liquid in the bag initially tested positive for explosives residue twice, and a dog team also got a positive hit. Chemical tests of the bottles' contents later turned up no explosives, said Capt Jack Chambers, head of the State Police Special Operations unit.
The woman had bought a one-way ticket to Detroit on Wednesday. The flight eventually left for Charlotte without her. Ms Qayyum planned to return to the airport today to take another flight, her mother said.
The FBI plans to perform additional tests on the bottles today.