TA-THREATS: Iraq-related bomb alert on Chicago-bound United Airlines plane

United Airlines Flight SK3909 inbound to Chigago from Amsterdam, will continue with its flight, dispite an email threat that there was a bomb on board. The warning came shortly after the plane had lifted off.



The message in Dutch read in Dutch: "Flight SK3909 from Amsterdam to Chicago has a bomb (on board) for Iraq. It is not known at this time if the plane has made an emergency landing. This is a breaking story and more details will follow.

UPDATE: United Airlines still shows the flight as in the air with a projected arrival time in Chicago at 1:20 PM local time.

UPDATE: The plane will contine its flight to Chicago as planned, dispite earlier reports of it making an mergency landing. "No extra measures will be taken as safety measures are already optimal", a spokesman said.


[edit on 10-13-2004 by Zion Mainframe]

Unfortunately there are reports like these almost every week. We will have to wait for more infor as it becomes available before we discusss this one in to much detail, does anyone have any additional info on this threat?

In the Dutch news the officials are saying that the milatry police has investigated the email, the cargo and passenger list and they decided to let the plane fly.
But on certain boards they are speaking of plane's crossing the sound barriers and escorting a passenger plane.
Will be on the lookout for more news

didn't the germans allow a plane to travel to Israel after a threat?

what will it take for these people to start taking every threat seriously?

Every threat is taken seriously, but you can't ground every plane to be threatened, otherwise you'd end up never getting any planes off the runway.

Clearly the airline was confident there is not a bomb onboard this plane, or they would have taken action to divert it. I have no idea of the risk assessment process they went through to determine this.

Seeing as email was used to send the message, I wouldn't be surprised if there is an arrest soon. Unless the person sending it was very good with computers, they will have left a trail to follow.

Originally posted by lister
Seeing as email was used to send the message, I wouldn't be surprised if there is an arrest soon. Unless the person sending it was very good with computers, they will have left a trail to follow.

True lister, unless the email was sent from an 'internet cafe' and user took care not to
leave any fingerprints.

Sanc'.

Blah blah blah...more scare tactics being used to scare us into submission.

As for the Internet Cafe idea...if its atleast a SEMI Good one it would log MAC addresses of the Computer. Every computer has its unique MAC address, sorta like an IP Address online. That can then be used to find the computer it was sent from.

Does anyone know if it landed safely? I can't find anything on regular news sites.

Originally posted by dreamlandmafia
Blah blah blah...more scare tactics being used to scare us into submission.

Personally, I prefer the idea of scare tactics as opposed to bombing tactics.

The IRA initially targeted individuals and this would often result in the deaths of innocent members of the public. They changed their targeted tactic to scare tactics after the realisation that the public, although becoming aware of their cause, were not actually sympathising with them.

The scare tactics caused an immense amount of delay and inconvenience for Joe Public, something that the Brits seem to hate more than death.

I'd sure want the plane to be grounded and searched. I realize that conduct in itself may provide a basis for mischief in the nature of crank warnings but there have been bombs on planes before. Seems to me better to be safe than sorry.