Jet, Grounded 19 Hours in Alaska by Bomb Threat, Departs for Tokyo

A United Airlines jumbo jet, grounded for nearly 19 hours by anonymous handwritten bomb threats, took off Monday, perhaps with the author of the notes on board, the FBI said.

The threats to the New York-Tokyo flight, contained in one note found in a restroom and another found elsewhere on the plane, almost certainly were written by one of the 288 people aboard the Boeing 747, Charles Lontor of the FBI office here said.

No one was arrested or detained, and a thorough search of the plane turned up no explosives, Lontor said.

“This was a terrible and costly inconvenience to our passengers, but our primary concern is safety,” said Charles Novak at the airline’s headquarters near Chicago.

United Flight 801 had taken off from New York Sunday afternoon when the discovery of the threats caused the pilot to make a detour to Anchorage.

The notes, Novak said, were “sufficient reason for the pilot to decide to land the aircraft.”

The plane landed about 5 p.m. at Anchorage, where police and military bomb squads searched it “from stem to stern” but found nothing, Lontor said.

FBI agents questioned some of the 267 passengers and 21 crew members, Lontor said, but he would not say whether they took handwriting samples. He said that those questioned were cooperative.

The airline put up the passengers and crew in Anchorage hotels Sunday night, but, when the plane departed at 11:38 a.m. Monday, passengers numbered only 238.

FBI investigators were certain that whoever made the threats was on the plane when it left New York, Lontor said. Noting that some passengers made other flight arrangements in Anchorage, he said: “We are checking on that.”