Emergency on Air France flight a “false alarm”, CEO says

The crude combination of a kitchen timer, paper and cardboard found in a lavatory on an Air France flight could have been a bomb, but the crew didn’t tell passengers of that possibility. He described it as an “extremely aggressive act”.

Flight AF463, with 459 passengers and 14 crew members on board, had left Mauritius at 9pm local time (1700 GMT) on Saturday and was due to arrive in Paris Charles de Gaulle at 5.50am (0450 GMT). “The Kenyan security is zeroing in on two passengers who appear suspicious”.

Mr Gagey told a news conference that the airline would press charges against those responsible and an inquiry would be held.

Asked if the device was placed in the restroom during the flight, Gagey said that sounded like the most plausible scenario, but did not give more details.

He said the object was made of material not usually found on the plane.

He said Air France was waiting to hear from Kenyan authorities but that “we will request an investigation to clarify” what had happened.

A Kenyan police official said they had discovered what looked like “a stopwatch mounted on a box”.

Kenya’s Airports Authority said on its Twitter account that normal operations at the Mombasa airport had resumed.

In 2005 a JetBlue flight that circled Los Angeles with a malfunctioning landing gear was captured by television cameras, and passengers picked up the live broadcasts on the plane’s cabin monitors.

According to Kenya’s Ministry of Interior, authorities are working to determine how Mauritius screens passengers and how the suspect package managed to bypass security.

Air France said it planned to take legal action over the incident, without giving further details. “We did not know what was happening”, said Lucchini.

For Air France, this was the fourth bomb hoax in recent weeks. “So they keep everybody calm and really quiet”.

After investigators obtained a confession from one of those who had loaded the bomb in Brazzaville, France indicted six Libyans, including Abdullah Senussi, brother-in-law of Muammar al-Gaddfi, and deputy head of Libyan intelligence.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group has claimed responsibility for that and the October 31 downing of a Russian passenger in the Sinai desert that killed all 224 people aboard.