August 23, 2006
F-16s Escort NW Flight to Amsterdam
Could be something, could be nothing:
A Northwest Airlines flight bound for India was escorted back to Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport by F-16 fighter jets on Wednesday.The plane was turned around after "a couple of passengers displayed behavior of concern," according to Northwest Airlines.
"Northwest is cooperating with the appropriate government officials," the company said in a statement.
The DC-10 plane, bound for Mumbai, was carrying 149 passengers, Northwest said. Flight number 42 has been canceled and will be rescheduled for Thursday.
The airport spokeswoman said the pilot had requested to return to Amsterdam and after the plane landed, there were some arrests.
She would not specify if those arrested were passengers.
Sources told Dutch journalist Marijn Tebbens that the disturbance was the result of some unruly passengers. The plane landed safely at 11:39 a.m. (5:39 a.m. ET), the sources said.
This sounds supicious, but at this point we have very little concrete information to go on. I'm am curious about odd sentence from the airport spokeswoman, "She would not specify if those arrested were passengers."
Who else would it be, an errant dogwalker?
"Who else would it be, an errant dogwalker?"
Flight crew?
Posted by: Jimmy at August 23, 2006 01:09 PMThe sentence doesn't actually say that those arrested were on the plane, only that after the plane landed, there were some arrests.
They could have arrested ground crew or others at the terminal as well...
Posted by: matt a at August 24, 2006 10:23 AMTime for an update.
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Early on in the flight, the Northwest Airlines crew decided to turn around and head back to Amsterdam, where the men were then taken into custody.
A statement from the prosecutor's office now says the phones were examined, and they hadn't been manipulated. Authorities also found that there were no explosives on the plane.
The statement says "no evidence could be brought forward that these men were about to commit an act of violence."
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Might want to put that on front page, a few folks around here seem, uh, RIDICULOUSLY paranoid about brown people. Pointing out another false alarm might help return a few of them to rational thought.
Posted by: wah at August 24, 2006 02:30 PM
