Reuters is reporting that twelve people have been arrested by Dutch authorities in the turnaround of a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Mumbai. This is now looking like a very serious matter, indeed.
"The 12 people that have been arrested were passengers," a spokesman said. "They will be interrogated in the coming hours by police investigators."
Asked whether a suspected terrorist attack could be ruled out, the spokesman said: "We don't want to get ahead of ourselves."
Earlier post here.
UPDATE: CNN has still more detail. Apparently the activities of the 12 passengers was alarming enough that US Air Marshalls on board broke cover and ordered the people to stop what they were doing. Frankly, if they were doing something that alarmed trained professionals, there is something going on here.
A U.S. government official said that some of the passengers had pulled out cell phones during the flight, and that some appeared to be trying to pass the cell phones to other passengers.
In addition, some passengers unfastened their seatbelts while the light requiring they be fastened was still illuminated, the official said.
That was enough to cause U.S. air marshals aboard the flight to break their cover. Fight attendants ordered the passengers to heed the orders of the marshals, the official added.
An airline source in Amsterdam said the passengers who were arrested were looking into plastic bags and were busy with their cell phones.
The spokesman said the 12 — whose identities have not been made public — face preliminary charges, but did not elaborate.
Flight 42 returned to Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport after "a couple of passengers displayed behavior of concern," according to Northwest Airlines.
"Northwest is cooperating with the appropriate government officials," the company's statement said.
The flight, which originated in Northwest's main hub of Minneapolis-St. Paul a day earlier, landed at Schiphol around noon (6 a.m. ET), about half an hour after it had left, TSA said.
I'll keep following this and update as appropriate.
UPDATE: AFP is reporting a detail I have not seen anywhere else: The pilot of the Northwest aircraft dumped the jet's fuel over the North Sea before landing. That is fairly unusual.
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At the risk of being slightly off topic, let me make an observation about the CNN.com story that has less to do with terrorism than with how it was put together. At the end of the story, notice the following:
“Journalist Marijn Tebbens and CNN’s Jeanne Meserve contributed to this report.
“Copyright 2006 CNN. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Associated Press contributed to this report.”
What does this all mean? Basically, that most of the information in this story almost certainly comes from the Associated Press. However, the story has been rewritten to make it look like a “CNN.com” story.
The trick is that a writer in Atlanta has rewritten the AP story and worked in a bit of information from a local freelancer and a bit of input from somebody who works for CNN. Together, each of these contributions would not make a complete story; they would amount to perhaps only a few paragraphs or sentences, which might not even be that important. In fact, those added paragraphs or sentences may have just repeated or confirmed something already in the AP story that came out first.
Bottom line: I always laugh at how these CNN.com stories are made to look like more than they really are; part of the magic of television culture in which CNN.com exists; and part of the magic of the legal contract that CNN has with the AP.
Actually, that is quite likely exactly what happened. The media is actually very lazy sometimes. Ok, most of the time.
Actually, I don’t think it’s laziness as much as economics and profits. To get back on topic: I’ll just bet that a lot of lefty Europeans will go nuts over the interestng revelation that U.S. Air Marshalls (presumably armed) were on board.
Also, regarding the fuel dumping: That probably was standard operating procedure; not a big deal. After all, the pilot returned to Amsterdam not long after take off. Therefore, the jet would have been above its certified landing weight. To land safetly so soon after take-off, the pilot would have needed to to dump fuel to lighten the load and get within a safe landing weight. The fuel he dumped would normally have been burned off during the course of a normal flight.
I was on a transatlantic flight once that had to turn back because of an ill passenger — the airline feared impoundment of the plane in Italy. In order to land back in the U.S. the pilot dropped a lot of jet fuel — the planes are too heavy to land safely if they are carrying too much fuel. Or so I was told.
I just hope, that if they turn out falsely accused – like the pregnant woman with the non-existent liquid explosive – you will post that too – unlike in the case of the pregnant woman with the non-existent liquid explosive.
Actually dumping fuel is standard procedure when a plane has to return to its original airport. They’re designed to take off with a full load of fuel but have to be under certain weights when landing.
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