Air France flight diverted to Kenya after bomb scare
“Air France has dispatched another aircraft to pick the passengers, but meanwhile the investigation is still going on and we will give an update about the process about the device”, Nkaissery added.
The updated Facebook post indicated questions about whether the device, described by a security official as a box with a timer on top, was some kind of hoax.
The airline “filed a legal complaint against unknown persons for endangering the life of others”, the spokesman said.
France has been on high alert for terrorist activity and in a state of emergency since Islamic extremist attacks November 13 in Paris killed 130 people.
The plane, carrying 459 passengers and 14 crew, had left Mauritius at 01:00 GMT and had been due to fly directly to Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris. He said one of those being interrogated is the man who reported the package.
“All the information available to us at the moment indicates the object was not capable of creating an explosion or damaging a plane, but was rather a mixture of cardboard, sheets of paper and a timer”.
One of those on board, Benoit Lucchini, said passengers were calm and were told by the crew that the plane was being diverted because of a technical problem. The fourth went ahead get onto the flight from Mauritius, a famous winter vacation spot for French tourists. Flight 463, originally bound for Paris from the island nation of Mauritius, landed safely at Moi International Airport in Mombasa, which was temporarily shut down as a result.
A French woman who was a passenger on the plane told Europe 1 radio that the device was “heard ticking”.
It was the latest incident for shaken Parisians and for aviation officials still on edge after ISIS fighters claimed credit for detonating a bomb on board a Russian airline over Egypt in October.
The passenger reported the device to the cabin crew, who informed the pilots, leading to an emergency landing at the airport in the Kenyan city of Mombasa.
Air France has been the target of four bomb alerts in the past 15 days, including three on flights in the U.S., Gagey said. It was like something wrong in the toilet, like a… No bombs were found on the planes from Los Angeles and Washington.
“I really admired the crew, because they thought it was a real bomb and they remained very serene”, said Antoine Dupont of the northern city of Lille.