Bomb threat detours Garuda plane flight

Bomb threat detours Garuda plane flight

JAKARTA (JP): A Garuda Indonesia aircraft en route from Munich
to Medan and Denpasar made an unscheduled 5.5-hour stopover at
Bucharest's Otopeni airport on Friday due to a bomb threat.

After a thorough check, the plane left Bucharest early
yesterday for Medan in North Sumatra with all its passengers
safe.

Garuda spokesman Jansius Siahaan told reporters here that the
plane, flight number GA-999, left Bucharest for Medan yesterday
at 3:50 a.m. (West Indonesian Time) and arrived at Medan's
Polonia Airport at 4:43 p.m.

"We have still not identified the caller. We don't even know
for sure yet what language he was speaking, whether it was
English, German, or Indonesian, or whether or not the call could
have come from an international terrorist organization," he said.
"However, this is a warning for us to tighten our security to
prevent a reoccurrence."

He said the B-747-200 aircraft carried 388 passengers; 19 in
the business class, 363 in the economy class, five children and
one infant, and a crew of 21.

The plane, originally scheduled to fly through Medan to
Denpasar in Bali, left Munich on Friday at 9 p.m. (West
Indonesian Time). The flight was halted by a phone call to
Garuda's office in Munich, which said the plane was carrying a
bomb.

Garuda's office in Munich attempted to contact the pilot in
command, captain Djoko Sugihartono, at 10:05 p.m. (West
Indonesian Time) but failed due to the distance.

Siahaan said that Garuda's office in Jakarta, which relayed
the message to the plane, ordered the pilots to land at the
nearest airport, which was Bucharest, so that passengers could be
evacuated and the plane searched.

Reuters reported from Bucharest yesterday that the plane
dumped fuel before making the emergency landing at Bucharest.

A Garuda official in Bucharest, Erika Donnelly, told reporters
that someone had called the airline in Germany and said there was
a bomb on board.

Rumanian Transport Ministry air accident investigator Sorin
Stoicescu told the news agency that the aircraft and its
passengers were searched but no bomb was found.

He said cargo which could not be X-rayed would be kept in
Bucharest for inspection.

Stoicescu said he had been told that three passengers were
escorted from the aircraft by German authorities at Munich
airport shortly before takeoff.

Several passengers told Reuters that three men of European
origin were taken off the plane, but there was no indication if
this was linked to the bomb scare.

Airport authorities were on full alert when the airliner
landed at Bucharest, with fire crews lining the runway and
ambulances on standby. The aircraft was immediately moved to an
isolated area of the sprawling airport.

Passengers were escorted to the VIP terminal of the Otopeni
Airport, which had been built for former communist dictator
Nicolae Ceausescu.

"We realized this was clearly not Bali," passenger Kristina
Rausch from Munich said. (pwn)