Two diverted Air France flights cleared after bomb scares

Two Air France flights bound for Paris from the United States were diverted Tuesday and landed safely after the airline received anonymous bomb threats, the carrier said.

Air France Flight 65 from Los Angeles global Airport to Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris was diverted to Salt Lake City worldwide Airport, Air France said in a statement.

Flight AF055 is expected to fly out of Halifax in the coming hours and has been renumbered to AF4093, Air France said in a statement.

Both planes – flight 65 out of Los Angeles, and flight 55 out of Dulles global Airport in Virginia outside the USA capital – have landed safely. Authorities in both the US and Canada were preparing to search the planes with dogs, officials said.

The planes are continuing on to France.

Peter Spurway, spokesman for Halifax Stanfield worldwide, says the airport is trying to make crew and passengers from Air France Flight 055 feel comfortable.

Russo said he had just finished dinner on the Airbus A380, which CNN says carried 497 passengers, when cabin staff took trays away early and the pilot announced an emergency landing. Russian Federation has said the group was also responsible for the downing on October 31 of a plane returning to St. Petersburg from the Sharm al-Sheikh resort in Egypt, killing all 224 on board.

Air France confirmed an anonymous threat also led to one of its planes being re-routed within the U.S.

The airline has taken commercial measures to enable passengers who booked a ticket for flying between 17 and 22 November to defer their flight free of additional charges. No further details on that threat were released.

The incidents came as the Paris terrorist attacks on Friday night, which killed 129 people and wounded 400, put European countries on high alert.

Los Angeles resident Ara Adjamian said the Federal Bureau of Investigation interrogated passengers one-by-one.

“Serious plans for explosions” forced the evacuation of a stadium in Hannover, Germany, on Tuesday night before a Netherlands-Germany soccer match, a local police chief told Germany’s public broadcaster NDR.