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)