Bomb threat grounds Stockholm plane
A plane due to fly from Stockholm to Istanbul was the subject of a bomb threat on Sunday evening. The Viking Airlines MD-83 was grounded at Arlanda Airport while police carried out a search, and was finally cleared for takeoff at 5am on Monday.
Police bomb experts and sniffer dogs were used to search the plane and passengers' baggage.
"We found nothing," said police commander Royne Käck. He added that he hoped to trace the person who made the anonymous phone call which grounded the plane for seven hours.
"There are perhaps certain leads we can follow," he said.
The plane should have taken off at 11pm. Police were made aware of the bomb warning 30 minutes before the plane was due to leave.
The person who received the call alerted the police, who were on Monday morning not revealing the identity of the person called nor any details of the threat. Police say the threat was concrete enough for them to take it seriously.
No passengers had boarded the plane when the threat came. The crew evacuated the aircraft as soon as they were made aware of the threat.
Viking Airlines is headquartered in Sweden, but operates mainly out of bases in Greece. The charter airline until recently ran scheduled flights from Stockholm to northern Iraq, but these were recently suspended after an aircraft belonging to another airline was reportedly fired on during takeoff.
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Police bomb experts and sniffer dogs were used to search the plane and passengers' baggage.
"We found nothing," said police commander Royne Käck. He added that he hoped to trace the person who made the anonymous phone call which grounded the plane for seven hours.
"There are perhaps certain leads we can follow," he said.
The plane should have taken off at 11pm. Police were made aware of the bomb warning 30 minutes before the plane was due to leave.
The person who received the call alerted the police, who were on Monday morning not revealing the identity of the person called nor any details of the threat. Police say the threat was concrete enough for them to take it seriously.
No passengers had boarded the plane when the threat came. The crew evacuated the aircraft as soon as they were made aware of the threat.
Viking Airlines is headquartered in Sweden, but operates mainly out of bases in Greece. The charter airline until recently ran scheduled flights from Stockholm to northern Iraq, but these were recently suspended after an aircraft belonging to another airline was reportedly fired on during takeoff.
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