Four US-bound British flights canceled, delayed within two days

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Saturday, January 03, 2004

Four US-bound British flights canceled, delayed within two days

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A London-Washington flight of British Airways was canceled Friday, bringing to four the number of its flights canceled or delayed between London's Heathrow airport and Washington Dulles International Airport during the past two days, media reports said Friday.

On Thursday, a same British Airways flight from London to Washington was canceled on security concerns, after US authorities boarded the plane on New Year's Eve when it landed at Dulles.

US officials, acting on intelligence information, boarded the jet plane and questioned some of the 247 passengers from London, but found no evidence of terrorism. The passengers waited for nearly three hours before they could get off the plane.

On Thursday night, US authorities delayed a London-bound British Airways flight for four hours, with passengers re-screenedand baggage examined because of security concerns.

Meanwhile, a US-bound flight from Mexico was told to return in the midair last Sunday, following a warning from US authorities ofa possible terrorist threat to the plane.

And last week, during Christmas holidays, six Air France flights between Paris and Los Angeles were canceled because of fears of possible terrorist attacks.

None of passengers on any of the flights were detained, but theincidents reflect the US government's intense vigilance against terrorism, since it raised the national threat alert to the secondhighest status on Dec. 21.

Source: Xinhua

Security has been beefed up since then around major US cities such as New York and Washington and critical infrastructures such as airports, nuclear facilities, power plants and oil refineries.

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