Transatlantic flight grounded over suspicious passenger
American Airlines flight from Los Angeles to Heathrow diverted to JFK
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Thursday, 12, Jul 2007 04:04
A London-bound American Airlines (AA) flight has been diverted to New York's JFK airport after reports of a suspicious passenger onboard.
The man was removed from flight 136, which was travelling to Heathrow airport, in an emergency landing at 02:45 local time (07:45 BST), following its departure from Los Angeles.
A statement from AA said a flight attendant on the Boeing 777-200 became suspicious about the behaviour of one of the passengers and decided to alert the pilot.
The unnamed man, one of 218 passengers on board the flight, was handed over to the FBI at JFK airport.
"No further information about the passenger is available and questions about further details of the incident should be addressed to the FBI," the airline said. "Passengers on board the aircraft have been accommodated on AA flights from New York to London throughout the day.
"The security of our passengers remains our number one priority and in this instance we considered it appropriate to make a diversion to JFK to assess the situation."
United States security chief Michael Chertoff has already suggested the diversion may have stemmed from a "misunderstanding".
"It may very well turn out that this is nothing more than a misunderstanding with an employee who used an employee bus to get on a plane for a private flight," the homeland security secretary told CNN.