Berlin, December 27: A false alarm over a suspicious suitcase forced the landing in Iceland of a German airliner bound for Detroit, national flag carrier Lufthansa said today.
A spokesman for the airline told AFP that the Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt yesterday with 160 people on board was carrying luggage from a passenger who was not on the plane.
As a precaution, the pilots landed the Airbus A330 in Iceland, where the baggage was removed. The flight then continued on to Detroit with a delay of about two hours.
The spokesman declined to comment on media reports that security experts feared there were explosives on board, but noted that all luggage in Frankfurt is X-rayed before being loaded onto planes.
“At no time was there a threat to security,” he said.
It was not immediately clear how the luggage turned up on the plane without its owner.
–Agencies