Toledo Express flight evacuated after bomb threat is found in seat pocket

12/15/2006

Thirty-five passengers boarding a noontime Delta Connection flight at Toledo Express Airport were evacuated, and the plane was removed to a remote area of the airfield for inspection, after a passenger found a bomb threat scrawled on an aircraft information card in a seat pocket, the Toledo-Lucas County Port Authority reported.

Written on the card, which shows an aircraft s basic layout and provides emergency instructions for travellers, was an obscenity about America and an arrow leading toward the back of the plane to the word bomb, said Kelly Rivera Nye, a port authority spokesman. The card was found aboard the plane to be used for Flight 6241 to Cincinnati, operated by Chautauqua Airlines.

The passengers were returned to the airport terminal while the aircraft was taken to the south end of the airport s secondary runway, Mrs. Nye said. A team of three bomb technicians and a bomb-sniffing dog found no devices aboard the plane, she said.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation interviewed the passengers, after which alternate travel arrangements were to be made for them, the spokesman said.

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