Air France flight forced to land in Kenya over bomb scare

TOM ODULA, Associated Press


NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — An Air France flight from Mauritius to Paris was forced to land in the Kenyan coastal city of Mombasa after a device suspected to be a bomb was found in the lavatory, a Kenyan police official said Sunday.

The Boeing 777 Air France flight 463 was heading to Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris when the pilots requested an emergency landing at the Moi International Airport at 12:37 a.m., police spokesman Charles Owino said.

"It requested an emergency landing when a device suspected to be an explosive was discovered in the lavatory," Owino said.

The plane was carrying 459 passengers and 14 crew members on board and had left Mauritius at 9 p.m., Owino said

All passengers were safely evacuated and the device was taken out, said Owino. Bomb experts are analyzing the suspected explosive, he said.

"The object, believed to be an explosive device has successfully been retrieved from the aircraft," said Kenya Airports Authority in a post on Twitter, adding that scheduled flights to Mombasa were disrupted during the interval but that normal operations have resumed.

"The plane just went down slowly, slowly, slowly, so we just realized probably something was wrong," said a passenger who identified himself as Benoit Lucchini of Paris. He spoke to journalists after leaving the plane in Mombasa.

"The personnel of Air France was just great, they were just wonderful. So they keep everybody calm. We did not know what was happening," said Luchini. "So we secured the seat belt to land in Mombasa because we thought it was a technical problem but actually it was not a technical problem. It was something in the toilet. Something wrong in the toilet, it could be a bomb."

-- (c) Associated Press 2015-12-20

There has been a lot of that stuff going on lately.

'Fake bomb' forces Air France flight into emergency landing

PARIS: -- A bomb scare that forced an Air France flight into an emergency landing in Kenya on Sunday (December 20) turned out to be a hoax.

Flight AF 463 from Mauritius to Paris was diverted and evacuated at Mombasa airport after a passenger found a suspicious item in the toilets.

The package was taken away for examination. It turned out it was a fake bomb made of cardboard and a timer, the French airline said.

The Boeing 777, with more than 470 people on board, had been checked before take-off, Air France said.

“As usual the crew had carried out a safety check of all the cupboards in all the lavatories, including where the suspicious package was found,” the airline’s chief executive, Frédéric Gagey, told reporters.

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.

The pilots decided to land at the nearest airport, in Kenya. The plane was evacuated using the emergency slides. Some passengers were later questioned by Kenyan police.

It’s the third Air France plane bound for Paris to be diverted over a bomb scare since the attacks that killed 130 people in the French capital last month.

-- (c) Copyright Euronews 2015-12-21

Fake bomb or not,this is the fourth time in a month,think I will be giving air France a wide berth.

If this was found after a security sweep it's obvious this was placed in the toilet after take off,that suggests to me that an individual is either sick in the head or in fact someone cares to highlight the ease by which a bomb may be planted.

Also this was a flight from Mauritius a high end destination that one wouldn't expect to encounter to many sickos.

Put cameras in the toilets i say!