Seven Flights Canceled Amid Security Fears

French and British authorities Saturday canceled seven flights to and from the United States after U.S. authorities warned French and British counterparts about intelligence reports indicating that Al Qaeda terrorists might target the flights.

Air France canceled Flight 26 from Paris to Washington today and Monday.

British Airways canceled Flight 223 from London to Washington today and Monday and Flight 222 -- the return to London -- for both days.

The British airline also canceled Flight 207 from London to Miami today.

Flight 223 was one of several canceled during the Christmas holidays when a terrorism scare grounded eight flights from Britain to Washington and from Paris to Los Angeles. No Los Angeles-bound flights were involved in Saturday’s alert.

The Christmas scare caused worldwide alarm but also some grumbling in foreign capitals about the aviation security crackdown by the U.S. government.

“This time we have threat reporting specific to time, date and location of specific flights,” a Bush administration official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

This alert is “not based on passenger manifests, it’s not like we’re looking for a specific person who is booked on that flight,” the official said, adding that information about a threat began to emerge late Thursday. It came from “a credible source and it’s been corroborated by other intel information.”

An official with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the nature of the threat was unclear.

“We knew they were targeting those flights, but we don’t know whether it was to hijack them or detonate a shoe bomb or plastic explosives, or biological weapon or something else,” the official said.

As during the holiday alert, the lack of publicly disclosed information made evaluating the credibility of the threat difficult.

Saturday’s statements seemed similar to the official description given in December of the intelligence related to the Paris-Los Angeles flights. U.S. law enforcement officials said that fear of an imminent attack during the holidays involving a Los Angeles-bound jet resulted from a convergence of different kinds of intelligence -- including a reference by suspected terrorists to a specific flight.

Investigators at the time grew increasingly worried when they found names matching those on terrorist watch lists on passenger manifests for the Air France flight already under scrutiny, U.S. and French officials said. Ultimately, six Air France flights were canceled.

But an exhaustive investigation in France, the United States, Tunisia and other countries cleared all the passengers who had come under suspicion.

And though European pilots and investigators acknowledged the need for aggressive precautions, some -- especially in France -- suggested that the U.S. had overreacted by having multiple flights canceled and demanding that a number of countries deploy sky marshals aboard flights.

Even some U.S. officials wondered about the level of alarm generated by the names, reasoning that it was unlikely that known Al Qaeda operatives intent on an airborne attack would travel under their real names

On Saturday, the office of French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin took the lead in the decision to ground the flights identified as possible targets by U.S. intelligence agencies, officials of both nations said.

“Based on new information and consultations between the governments, the prudent decision was to cancel the flights,” a U.S. official said.

The intelligence was relayed to the French government within 24 hours before the cancellation was announced Saturday, the U.S. official said.

“Better safe than sorry,” a French Interior Ministry official said. “The Americans have a lot of information.”

In London, Britain’s Department of Transportation said it based its decision on the safety of travelers, the information about a threat and discussions with British Airways. A month ago, two London-Washington flights were canceled and several others were delayed as police conducted detailed questioning and searches of passengers and luggage.

The U.S. government passed along the alert to Britain and France but left the response up to those governments and airlines, U.S. officials said.

Instead of canceling, Britain and France could have chosen to follow U.S.-mandated safeguards such as placing air marshals aboard the flights and conducting aggressive searches of passengers and cargo, officials said.

“We have received very specific and credible threat information about Al Qaeda’s desire to target specific flights, and we have passed that information on to our international partners, who have made the decision to cancel the flights,” said Brian Roehrkasse, spokesman for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Nonetheless, Roehrkasse said there were no plans to raise the terror threat level from yellow, or elevated, to orange, or high, as the administration did in December.

Discrepancies about the appropriate response to aviation-related threats aside, U.S. and European counter-terrorism experts remain concerned about a possible attack by Al Qaeda and its allied networks.

Signs that terrorists have airplanes in mind, either for a mid-air bombing or a Sept. 11-style crash into an American target, have cropped up in several countries in recent months.

The beginning of the Muslim holiday today that marks the yearly pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, also may have contributed to the perception of a heightened menace because Islamic terrorists have often tried to strike on symbolic dates.

As a result, the new round of cancellations seems reasonable, an aviation security expert said.

U.S. officials appear to be “behaving sensibly in light of the information that they have,” said Cathal Flynn, who was associate administrator for civil aviation security at the Federal Aviation Administration from 1993 to 2000.

But he said it was puzzling to him that the Air France and British Airways flights were canceled days in advance of their departures.

“I can’t figure it out,” he said. “Threats tend to transfer. If it is made public that one flight was targeted, well then a different flight will be targeted, so it is very difficult to understand. There has to be some kind of reason connected to the kind of intelligence they have.”

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Rotella reported from Paris and Schrader from Washington. Times staff writer John Daniszewski in London contributed to this report.