Terrorism alerts for British flights possible for years: official

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Monday, January 05, 2004

Terrorism alerts for British flights possible for years: official

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British Transport Secretary Alistair Darling warned on Sunday that British air flights may face years of severe security alerts like the one that forced several international flights to be grounded last week.

Darling said in an interview with British Broadcast Corporationthat "for many years to come, we are going to be living in an age where there is going to be a heightened state of alert. Sometimes it will be quite severe."

Specific information about a possible terror threat prompted the British Airways to cancel two flights from Britain to Washington and one to the Saudi capital of Riyadh last week on advice of government which said it received specific information about a possible terror threat like one similar to the September 11-style attack.

"Where we have to cancel a flight, the grounds are very clear in our minds and we are justified in taking that decision," he said.

A British Airways' BA223 flight which was canceled last Thursday and Friday was delayed for more than three hours to take off Sunday afternoon as the US authorities demanded information about the flight for what a BA spokeswoman termed "security purposes."

Passengers said security had been extremely tight at London's Heathrow airport before their departure, but the flight itself aboard the jumbo jet was uneventful.

"The delay has been caused by the passing of some extra information to the US," a BA spokesman said. "They have requested to be supplied with extra information about the flight for security purposes before take-off to Washington, the same as happened yesterday."

Reports said flights from Mexico and France to the United States were also canceled over the holiday period due to security fears.

Britain's Sunday Times newspaper, citing a senior intelligence source, said security services had word of a plot by the Islamic extremist group al Qaeda again to hijack several jets, including aBA plane, simultaneously and crash them into big US targets, in are-run of September 11.

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