OTTAWA - Canadian military jets intercepted a Virgin Atlantic flight from London to New York on Friday and diverted it to the eastern city of Halifax after its transponder mistakenly sent out a hijacking alert, officials said.
"Virgin Atlantic's flight operations department is in contact with the flight deck and crew on the aircraft, and they have confirmed that this is a false alarm," a spokeswoman at Virgin Atlantic headquarters in London said earlier.
The plane, an Airbus A340-600 carrying 273 passengers and 16 crew members, landed at Halifax airport on Canada's east coast at 10:59 am (1459 GMT) and was immediately surrounded by heavily armed federal police.
The pilot told ground officials that the airplane had not been hijacked, Virgin Atlantic said, but military commanders still sent two Canadian CF-18 fighter jets to intercept it as a precaution.
"(The passengers) are still on board right now. Once we determine what the emergency was or not, the passengers will probably be cleared through customs," said Royal Canadian Mounted Police constable Joe Taplin.
Virgin Atlantic blamed a false hijacking message from a malfunctioning transponder for the incident. The transponder is a cockpit device that sends out a preset coded number to identify an aircraft on radar screens.
In the case of a real hijacking, the preset transponder code can be discreetly changed to 7500 by the flight crew -- tipping off air traffic controllers on the ground without the need for pilots to speak on the radio.
Officials are investigating what caused the apparent equipment error.
Virgin officials said they plan to get the aircraft and its passengers to New York's John F. Kennedy Airport as soon as possible.
Dozens of aircraft destined for the United States were diverted to Halifax following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.
06/03/2005 17:29 GMT