Air France flight diverted after suspicious device found in bathroom

Frédéric Gagey said the item found in the plane’s bathroom appeared to be made of “cardboard, papers and what looks like a kitchen timer”. Since the tragic Paris attacks, Gagey revealed the airline has had “heightened security checks”.

Passengers who were on board an Air France Boeing 777 aircraft that made an emergency landing are escorted from Moi International Airport in Kenya’s coastal city of Mombasa. “This object did not contain explosives”, stated Gagey at a news source conference in Paris. He said it contained no explosives.

France is on high alert after militant attacks in Paris in November left 130 people dead, and is one of many countries taking extra security precautions.

France remains in a state of emergency after the Nov 13 atrocities. The fourth came on board the flight from Mauritius, a popular winter vacation spot for French tourists.

Gagey said passengers were evacuated from the plane on emergency slides.

The 30-year-old thought the flight from Mauritius to Paris was in technical difficulty but had no idea a suspected bomb had been found in a toilet. The airport was reopened and normal flights resumed.

Mombasa County Commissioner Nelson Marwa said the passengers had departed on another plane sent by Air France to pick them, but an undisclosed number of them who were being questioned by authorities had stayed behind, but did not say if they were under arrest.

“The plane just went down slowly, slowly, slowly, so we just realised probably something was wrong”, Benoit Lucchini of Paris said.

“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. After the plane landed, they told us to run to the chutes, and to keep going, far from the plane.

The airline “filed a legal complaint against unknown persons for endangering the life of others”, a company spokesman said. And so we secured our seat-belts, and we (Air France) said we had to land in Mombasa because we had a technical problem. “It was something in the toilet”.

A passenger alerted the crew after finding a suspect package an hour after the Boeing 777 took off. The airliner was diverted to the Kenyan city of Mombasa, where the 459 passengers and 14 crew members used emergency chutes to disembark.

“This Mombasa – Paris flight is scheduled to leave in the late afternoon of Sunday, December 20”, it said.

According to the Associated Press, this is the third bomb threat linked to an Air France flight in recent weeks.