A Belgian airplane en route to Israel made an emergency landing in Belgrade after a phony bomb and hijack threat was phoned into the airline’s Tel Aviv office halfway through the flight.
Sabena Flight 203 from Brussels continued onto Tel Aviv after security officials checked the plane’s passengers and baggage. The flight landed Sunday some nine hours behind schedule.
It was the first international flight to land in the Yugoslav capital since last summer, when a United Nations boycott restricted landings there to local and U.N. aircraft.
The Sabena A-310 Airbus with 136 passengers aboard, including a dozen German pilgrims, took off from Brussels at noon and was about two hours into its flight when an anonymous caller phoned Sabena’s Tel Aviv office with a warning that four hijackers and a bomb were aboard.
The Tel Aviv manager immediately passed on the warning to Sabena’s head office in Brussels, which instructed the pilot to land at the nearest available airport. Belgrade immediately agreed to the landing.
The plane was ordered to park in a far corner of the field. Passengers and crew were bussed to the terminal building some distance away and inspected and interrogated, while the aircraft and baggage were minutely examined by security police.
Passengers said Yugoslavian officials treated them well, but noted that the rundown airport terminal had the appearance of being virtually abandoned.
After nothing unusual was discovered, the plane took off again in the late evening.
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