Global Airport News

Global Airport News

US authorities stopped an Emirates plane as it was about to leave New York's JFK airport over a security scare, but the incident was a "false alarm," a law enforcement source said on Thursday.

The source said a passenger aboard the flight to Dubai had a name similar to a person on the US "no fly" list.

The source said the plane, which was halted as it taxied toward a runway, later departed. A flight tracking website showed it had left an hour and a half late.

On Saturday an attempt to detonate a car bomb in New York's Times Square failed. The suspect in that incident was arrested on Monday night after he was removed from an Emirates flight that was also about to leave for Dubai.

Prosecutors on Tuesday charged Faisal Shahzad, 30, a naturalised US citizen born in Pakistan, with five counts, including attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction and trying to kill and maim people within the United States.

Shahzad had bought a ticket and boarded the plane on Monday evening despite having been put on a US government "no-fly" list earlier in the day. On Wednesday, the Obama administration ordered airlines to step up their efforts to prevent people on the list from boarding flights.