U.S. Fighter Jets Rescue Air France Flight After Threat — Passengers Recount Terrifying Ordeal

The FBI and airlines were so concerned about a threat against one flight – among a total of 10 – on Memorial Day that U.S fighter jets were sent to rescue it. Luckily, the Air France aircraft landed safely.

This was the most dramatic response Monday to a series of threats called in on nearly a dozen international flights. This plane was given an escort by U.S. F-15 fighter jets; it left Charles de Gaulle and was threatened by a phone call to the McHenry barracks in Maryland, the Associated Press reported.

The call came in about 6:30 a.m. Monday to warn that a chemical weapon was on board. According to the New York Daily News, the U.S. tried to contact Air France, but they were slow to respond. So, the U.S. military launched the fighter jets “out of an abundance of caution.”

By 9 a.m., they were guiding it to land at an undisclosed location near JFK Airport in New York City, where it was searched, the Wall Street Journal added. Nothing was found.

And though the threat was nonsense and no one was in any real danger, the fact that the plane was threatened at all was enough to send passengers, like 29-year-old Barack Hazan, into a state of panic.

“It was … some type of terrorist threat… Everything was checked beforehand, they checked everything again. They didn’t let anyone get off. It was horrible.”

Fellow passenger, Yossi Adias, 31, said everyone was terrified; “no one knew what was going on. We were on a 15 hour flight and spent 2 ½ under a lot of pressure, a lot of pressure. It was a nightmare.”

Once the aircraft landed, its cargo holds were searched, bomb-sniffing dogs sent in, and passengers questioned for three hours by Port Authority and federal authorities, the Daily News added.

Whomever this anonymous caller was – and the bureau seems confident the same person lodged all 10 threats – he or she wasn’t content with rattling nerves just once.

Similar calls were made against airlines from Saudia Arabia, Birmingham, England, Madrid, Paris, and London, and, of course, the Air France flight that required an escort.

A source has noted that it isn’t odd for busy holiday weekends to inspire such frightening warnings, but more than one on the same day is odd.

“We don’t know if it’s some nut in a room making calls or if it’s an organized effort to upset … travel today. But the JFK Squad is pretty good at locking up these people who are making the threats. If they are not professionals, (they) can be tracked down through a number of methods.”

[Photo Courtesy Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images]