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Jul 12, 2007 10:30 am US/Eastern
Officials: Diverted Flight Not Terror-Related
NEW YORK (CBS) ―
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American Airlines flight 136 was diverted to JFK because of a suspicious passenger. (File)
CBS
The Transportation Security Administration says there appear to be no links to terrorism after a flight was diverted on its way from Los Angeles to London.
A flight attendant on the American Airlines Flight 136 became concerned that a passenger might not have gone through proper security screening before boarding the Heathrow Airport-bound flight at Los Angeles International Airport, said airline spokeswoman Sonja Whitemon.
The flight attendant had seen the male passenger ride to the terminal on an employee bus and bypass security, as employees are able to do, Whitemon said.
After talking to the passenger, flight crew members decided they needed to divert the plane to New York's Kennedy Airport to search the cabin and re-screen the 230 passengers, in keeping with standard security procedures, she said.
Authorities were questioning the passenger Thursday morning at JFK, officials said.
American Airlines security confirmed the identity of the passenger, the uncertain process by how he boarded the plane and that he was an executive platinum traveler with a legitimate round trip ticket that purchased on April 19, the Homeland Security officials told CBS News.
The scare came on the heels of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff's comment earlier this week that he had a "gut feeling" the United States faced a heightened risk of attack this summer. A new threat assessment from U.S. counterterrorism analysts said Al Qaeda had restored its operating capabilities to a level unseen since shortly before the 2001 attacks.
Chertoff told CNN on Thursday that the airplane incident may have been a miscue. The person in question turned out to be a private citizen, and not an American Airlines employee, as Chertoff had originally told CNN.
The plane landed in New York at about 3:30 a.m., said Alan Hicks, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the airport. He said the agency was told about an hour earlier that Flight 136 was being diverted.
The flight was later canceled because the unplanned stop ended up exhausting the crew's allowed flight time, Whitemon said. She said the passengers were being transferred to other flights.
(© 2007 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
