Berlin: A false alarm over a suspicious
suitcase forced the landing in Iceland of a German airliner
bound for Detroit, national flag carrier Lufthansa said on Sunday.
A spokesman for the airline said that the
Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt yesterday with 160 people on
board was carrying luggage from a passenger who was not on the
plane.
As a precaution, the pilots landed the Airbus A330 in
Iceland, where the baggage was removed. The flight then
continued on to Detroit with a delay of about two hours.
The spokesman declined to comment on media reports
that security experts feared there were explosives on board,
but noted that all luggage in Frankfurt is X-rayed before
being loaded onto planes.
"At no time was there a threat to security," he said.
It was not immediately clear how the luggage turned up
on the plane without its owner.
The incident came as a 23-year-old Nigerian was
charged in the United States with trying to blow up a
Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam as it was preparing
to land in Detroit on Christmas Day.
Airports worldwide, including Germany's largest in
Frankfurt, have since stepped up security.
PTI
First Published: Sunday, December 27, 2009, 19:37