A bomb scare disrupted traffic at Shannon airport for six hours yesterday, after which gardai were trying to locate a man in the Philippines who had earlier reported his travel bag missing on a flight from Kansas city to New York.
A suspicious object was detected in a large black standard travel bag which was found in the Customs area at noon yesterday.
Shortly after 6 p.m. the bag, with a long cable attached, was dragged by an Army jeep to a safe position a mile from the terminal buildings. It was escorted by an airport emergency vehicle and a fire brigade jeep.
An Army bomb disposal officer from Collins Barracks, Cork, "disrupted" the baggage with a remote-controlled explosion in the long grass beside the old runway. Later the officer, who did not wish to be named, told The Irish Times that while it turned out to be a false alarm, there were good grounds to be suspicious of a packet which showed up on being X-rayed by Army experts.
This, however, turned out to be an electronic device which was "found to be an innocent object," believed to be a child's toy.
The remains of the shattered bag and its contents were gathered up by the gardai and put into several large plastic bags.
It was unclear how the suspect bag reached Shannon. Aer Lingus said it did not arrive on their flight from New York in the morning, and it had no Irish airline tags.
A spokesman for Continental Airlines in London said it was not willing to comment as to whether it arrived on one of its daily early morning flights from New York to Shannon.
The luggage is understood to have had the name of a Filipino man on the tags, which indicated that the passenger had earlier travelled on Continental Airlines from Kansas City via Cleveland to New York en route to Manila.
He had already reported his baggage as missing.
Chief Supt Liam Quinn of Ennis, who was in charge of the Garda operation, said that they will be endeavouring to discover the origin of the baggage and how it got to Shannon. Insp Tom Kennedy of Shannon, who took possession of the tag, was endeavouring to trace the passenger in Manila.
Passengers were delayed for up to an hour while the new terminal building was sealed off and they used the old facilities.