EgyptAir plane lands in China after bomb threat

Associated Press

CAIRO

An EgyptAir plane that made an emergency landing Wednesday in Uzbekistan after a bomb threat resumed its flight and landed in Beijing, Egyptian officials said, the latest in a series of deadly or damaging air-travel incidents involving Egypt.

The officials said no bomb was found after the Airbus A330-220 and its passengers were searched by explosives experts. The plane took off for the Chinese capital four hours after it landed in the town of Urgench, about 600 miles west of the Uzbek capital, Tashkent.

According to the officials, an anonymous caller telephoned security agents at the Cairo airport to say a bomb was on board EgyptAir Flight 955, which had 135 passengers and crew on board. The agents immediately contacted the aircraft and ordered it to land at the nearest airport, the officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

Russian news agency RIA Novosti quoted an unidentified official with Uzbekistan Airways as saying the airport in Urgench was closed after the EgyptAir plane’s emergency landing.

The incident came nearly three weeks after an EgyptAir flight crashed in the Mediterranean Sea as it was approaching the Egyptian coast while en route to Cairo from Paris. All 66 people on board were killed, and the search for the plane’s flight and data recorders – the so-called black boxes – still is underway.

Egyptian officials say the Paris-Cairo plane most likely was downed by an act of terror.

Last October, a Russian airliner crashed in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula shortly after taking off from the Egyptian resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh, killing all 224 people on board. A local affiliate of the Islamic State group claimed responsibility for downing the aircraft just hours after the crash.