Two flights out of Tibet and southern Jiangxi bound for Beijing were grounded on Tuesday after China’s national carrier, Air China, received “threat calls” from unidentified sources, prompting a tightening of security in many airports across the country.
Officials were unclear whether the calls made to the airline were simply hoaxes. As of Tuesday night, no dangerous items had been found on either aircraft following security checks, the airline said, and both flights were scheduled to depart following delays of several hours.
Tuesday's delays followed another threat call made on Monday, when a flight from the western Xinjiang region, also bound for Beijing, was diverted to Lanzhou after authorities said they had received a terror threat.
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The threat later turned out to be a hoax. Late on Monday night, a man surnamed Wang was detained in Urumqi, the capital city of the Xinjiang region. The official Xinhua news agency said he had confessed to
police that he had fabricated the threat, although his motive was still unclear.
While Chinese officials have in the past spoken of terror threats from separatist Uighur groups in Xinjiang, they said Monday’s incident appeared to be a hoax. The suspect was thought to be from the majority
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Han Chinese ethnic group; Wang is a common Han surname.
In June, officials said passengers and air crew had foiled an attempted hijacking of a flight from the Xinjiang city of Hotan to Urumqi by six Uighur men.
Authorities did not say if the threat calls made on Tuesday had any connection to the Urumqi case. Xinhua reported that two Air China flights scheduled to depart Lhasa, the capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), and Nanchang, the provincial capital of southern Jiangxi, were grounded after the airline received “threat calls from unidentified sources” hours before takeoff.
Xinhua added that “no abnormalities” were found on the aircraft as of Tuesday night, after initial security checks.
In recent months, a string of terror threat hoaxes have unnerved Chinese security officials. In August, another Air China flight bound for the United States was forced to return to Beijing airport after takeoff following a threat call. No security breaches were found following subsequent investigations.
In an another case in August, a Shenzhen airlines flight was forced to return to base after taking off when the airline received a bomb threat, which later turned out to be a hoax inspired by a financial dispute. Investigations found the caller had made up the threat to prevent his creditor from reaching his final destination, and collecting from him the debt he had owed.