A commercial airliner carrying more than 300 passengers was forced to make an emergency landing under military escort at Stansted airport yesterday after an anonymous caller claimed that there was a bomb on board "for Iraq".
Olympic Airways flight 411 from Athens to New York was in British airspace when its pilot was warned that a Greek newspaper had been told the flight would explode.
Two RAF Tornado fighter jets were scrambled and escorted the plane to Stansted, Essex, which has extensive experience of dealing with security threats, including several hijackings.
Last night, police erected arc lights and explosives teams prepared to board the aircraft with sniffer dogs to begin a thorough search.
"It could be a long evening. The safety of our officers is paramount," said a police spokeswoman. "We have well-rehearsed contingency plans for this sort of thing."
The threat, made to the Greek daily paper Ethnos, was followed by a second call - apparently from another man - who said: "Are you listening? Flight 411 Olympic for America. Bomb. America will see. Six o'clock message for you."
But the Greek authorities appeared baffled as to why the country's national airline should be targeted. Greece has traditionally good relations with the Arab world and was against the invasion of Iraq.
Security is tight at Athens' new international airport, following the Olympic games last month, and the aircraft would have been checked before it took off at lunchtime.
It was escorted to Stansted by two fighters from the quick reaction alert team set up after the September 11 attacks on the US, Whitehall sources said.
Passengers were interviewed by police after being evacuated from the Airbus A340-300. A New York fireman involved in the September 11 rescue efforts was among them.
Robert Santandrea, 33, from Queens, told how the alert had brought back memories of 9/11. "I was praying. I was a little nervous, but everyone was very calm," he said as he arrived at a hotel at Stansted airport with other passengers.
Leonard Vlamis, chief executive of Olympic Airways, said last night: "We were told to land at Stansted, which [the plane] did safely. The passengers are in Stansted airport right now. They are all OK. The passengers were calm and they were evacuated properly and safely. There was no problem inside the flight - everything was normal."
A spokesman for the Department for Transport played down the incident, saying the authorities were making their "standard response". He said: "These are rehearsed procedures. Fortunately nothing has exploded, if indeed there was a bomb on board, but we take all threats seriously."
Two Tornados from RAF Coningsby, Lincolnshire, were scrambled in October 2002 to intercept a flight heading for Heathrow after a passenger on a British Airways jet thought he had overheard two travellers discussing plans to hijack the aircraft. In fact, he had misunderstood what police described as a "perfectly innocuous conversation".
