Israel diverts airliner to Cyprus in bomb scare
TEL AVIV -- Israeli fighter planes escorted a German airliner bound for the Jewish state to Cyprus yesterday after a bomb threat that was the latest in a string of such scares in Europe that turned out to be hoaxes.
The Lufthansa aircraft, which had been bound from Frankfurt to Tel Aviv with 347 passengers and crewmembers aboard, was diverted with its escort of Israeli warplanes to land at Larnaca airport for checks that found nothing. It later took off again and landed at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion airport.
The latest hoax playing on heightened international security fears prompted Cypriot displeasure at tactics used by Israeli aviation authorities to divert the
Cypriot officials said that, without notification, the two Israeli fighters had violated its flight information region, a large swath of airspace in the east Mediterranean.
"There are two issues. One is the violation of the [flight information region]; it is done regularly by Israel, it is not unusual, but when it is combined with the incident of this plane it becomes more serious," said Haris Thrassou, Cyprus's communications minister.
Another Cypriot official said: "The matter will be discussed tomorrow and explanations will be sought."
Lufthansa said it had not judged the threat to be serious but that Israel had insisted on diverting the plane.
The aircraft's 331 passengers and 16 crewmembers reboarded for the flight on to Israel after the five-hour checks of the plane and luggage in Larnaca by Cypriot bomb experts and sniffer dogs.
"We searched it with dogs, bomb explosives experts, and all kinds of equipment. It was clean," police spokesman Demetris Demetriou said.
It was the sixth midair bomb scare over Europe in 10 days and highlighted the problem of hoaxers. Airline officials and security analysts said carriers had to play safe, given fears of terrorism.
The anonymous threat was made to city authorities in Frankfurt and Berlin earlier yesterday.
"After checking with the German authorities we came to the conclusion this bomb threat was not so serious," said Lufthansa spokesman Thomas Jachnow.
"We accept the decision of the Israeli government . . . but we are sure this bomb warning wasn't serious," said Jachnow, speaking by phone from Frankfurt.
Passengers were taken off Flight 686 after it landed and was parked nearly 2 miles from the main airport terminal. Officers emptied baggage containers onto the runway.
The bomb scares have sent jitters through the airline industry in the past week, but security specialists said airlines had little choice. "If there is a threat on an aircraft then you treat it as real, given that the terrorist threat is so high at the moment," said Michael Burns, director of aviation markets at Qinetiq, a consulting firm.
Israeli media reported that Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz had ordered that the plane should not enter Israeli airspace until security checks had been completed. The Defense Ministry was not immediately available for comment.
Aviation authorities in Larnaca, the closest friendly civilian airport to Ben Gurion in Tel Aviv, said they had not initially been told the reason for the diversion.
