Air Express

A security alert at Los Angeles International Airport temporarily shut down three terminals and caused several delays at the busy Californian transport hub, officials said yesterday.

The alarm was raised after a passenger with a carry-on bag bypassed security screeners, Los Angeles World Airports spokeswoman Nancy Castles said.

Terminals five, six and seven were closed for roughly 90 minutes before the passenger was located, questioned and screened. Fourteen departures were delayed as a result of the alert, Castles said.

“Airport operations expect to return to normal as airlines try to keep flights on time and insert delayed flights into schedules as quickly as possible,” Castles said.

The incident followed a security alert on a flight from Washington to Denver late Wednesday when a Qatari diplomat triggered a bomb scare after lighting a cigarette in one of the plane’s restrooms.

The incidents come one week after the United States unveiled new security measures subjecting all US-bound plane passengers to screening methods that use real-time intelligence to target potential threats, replacing the mandatory screening of passengers from a blacklist of 14 mainly Muslim countries.

The measures were announced after a Nigerian man failed to detonate explosives concealed in his underwear on a Detroit-bound flight from Amsterdam on Christmas Day.

According to figures released by the Transportation Security Administration Thursday, the number of passenger planes diverted or forced to land for security reasons has nearly doubled in the first three months of 2010 compared to the same period in 2009.

Thirty-three flights were diverted January and March, the TSA figures showed, compared to 17 in the first trimester of 2009.

AFP