- (AFP) - British Airways abruptly cancelled its mid-afternoon
London-to-Washington flight for a second day running, amid speculation
of a "real and definite threat" of a deadly September 11 style
attack on the US capital.
-
- Some 300 passengers at Heathrow airport were already
checking in for BA Flight 223 -- a Boeing 747 service -- when British Airways
announced its cancellation about two hours before it was due to depart
at 3:05 pm (1505 GMT).
-
- In a press statement, British Airways said it was cancelling
the flight -- and its return leg, BA Flight 222 -- "due to security
reasons ... following the latest advice from the United Kingdom government".
-
- "It is expected that other flights across the British
Airways network will operate as normal," it said. "We apologise
to our customers booked to travel on BA223 for the inconvenience caused."
-
- Thursday's flight was similarly cancelled a few hours
before it was scheduled to depart from London after British Airways received
"security advice" from the British government.
-
- The day before, on New Year's Eve, passengers on BA Flight
223 were questioned by FBI agents for five hours upon arrival at Dulles
international airport in the US capital.
-
- Paul Beaver, a highly-regarded British defence and security
expert, said Friday he had been told -- by whom he didn't say -- of "a
real and definite threat" to attack Washington with a hijacked plane.
-
- "We have got intelligence, I am told, that there
was a plan to take the aircraft and destroy it over Washington or fly it
into something," Beaver told the domestic Press Association news agency.
-
- "Washington is the definite target," added
Beaver, who is a director of a London consulting firm Ashbourne Beaver
Associates that specialises in defence and security issues.
-
- "All I know is there is a real and definite threat,"
added Beaver, who did not specify if his information specifically related
to BA Flight 223, one of three that British Airways operates from Heathrow
to Dulles.
-
- British Airways operates three flights a day to Dulles
airport, departing London at 10:55 am, 3:05 pm and 18:40 pm. A spokesman
told AFP that the day's last flight was still scheduled to depart as normal.
-
- While BA Flight 223 uses Boeing 747s, the earlier and
later flights use twin-engined Boeing 777s, which are also wide-body planes
but smaller in terms of passenger capacity.
-
- Thursday's cancellation was believed to be the first
involving a US-bound British airliner for security reasons since the September
11 attacks in the United States in 2001.
-
- Washington and London have been on heightened alert throughout
the Christmas and New Year period because of fears of a potential terrorist
strike.
-
- Chief among those fears is a repeat of September 11,
when Al-Qaeda operatives hijacked three US domestic airliners, then flew
them into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington.
-
- A fourth hijacked airliner crashed in Pennsylvania.
-
- Besides the British Airways flights, an Aeromexico flight
from Mexico City to Los Angeles was cancelled on New Year's Eve, as well
as six Air France flights between Paris and Los Angeles on Christmas Eve.
-
- Beaver said Friday that there is "good and precise
intelligence that there is more than one Al-Qaeda or Al-Qaeda-like group
operating against the United States".
-
- "One is based in central America and the other is
based in Europe -- in London or Paris," he said.
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