A male passenger’s name aboard a Delta Air Lines flight from Paris triggered a terrorist alert at the airport of delta airlines which led to an hour long drama and delaying of flights.
The airport authorities had recived hijacking threats against two Delta Air Lines, Delta Flight 119 from Paris and Flight 81 from Amsterdam, that were about to land at Kennedy Airport on Friday at the same time.
Although there was no truth in those threats both the planes got delayed along with the shutting down of the Van Wyck Expressway.
"It looked a lot worse than it was," said a police source. "Everything went very well, the response worked like clockwork."
Mark Hatfield, a spokesman for the federal Transportation Security Administration said, "You have to treat a situation like this like a real incident and initiate a response so if it turns out to be a hijacking, you can neutralize the threat."
The agency got the call at 1:05 p.m., an hour ago before the planes were going to land. The pilots of the plane were immediately contacted who reported that everything was normal in the plane.
When Flight 119 got down the male passenger with suspicious name was intervened and was found to be innocent.
"They (CIA) did the right thing by alerting us, but it turned out to be false information," Martinez said. "I don't know where they got the information, but it turned out to be erroneous. Everyone followed the proper procedure."
