EgyptAir was meant to take off from Cairo to Beijing and made a scary landing in Uzbekistan Wednesday following the bomb threat.
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According to The Associated Press, EgyptAir Flight 955 was en route from Cairo International Airport in Egypt to Beijing, China, when an anonymous caller telephoned security agents at the Egyptian airport and informed them that there was a bomb on the plane. When the call was made to authorities, they immediately called the flight staff and ordered them to land at the nearest airport. No bomb was found.
The incident follows a tragedy on May 19 when the EgyptAir Airbus A320 disappeared from radar screens over the Mediterranean Sea, 10 miles into Egyptian airspace. All 66 people on board were killed and the search for the plane’s flight and data recorders the so called black boxes is still underway.
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.
Egypt’s tourism industry, a cornerstone of the economy and a critical source of hard currency, has been struggling since the 2011 uprising that ended Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year rule and ushered in a period of political and economic upheaval.
It is the latest in a series of incidents involving Egyptian planes or airports. An affiliate of the extremist Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) claimed responsibility of the aircraft tragedy just hours after the crash occurred.
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The plane and passengers were searched by Uzbek authorities who confirmed that the threat was a hoax, it said.
