(Picture for representation purpose)
KUWAIT CITY: A Germany-bound Eurowings passenger flight from Oman landed in Kuwait on Sunday over a bomb threat but no explosives were found on board, authorities said.
The Airbus A330 from Salalah heading to Cologne, Eurowings flight No. EW117, landed at 8 a.m. at Kuwait International Airport in Kuwait City after the captain received word of the threat, said Mansour al-Hashemi, a spokesman for Kuwait's civil aviation authority.
Security officials found no signs of explosives on the aircraft, al-Hashemi said. He declined to discuss how the threat was made against the aircraft.
Eurowings said there were 287 passengers and 10 crew members on board the plane, which was being flown by SunExpress on its behalf.
Eurowings said the flight was a charter for tour company FTI.
The plane was diverted to Kuwait "for security reasons and in consultation with the relevant authorities," Eurowings said in an emailed statement, without elaborating.
The airline added that the flight would take off at 1 a.m. Monday to head to Cologne as legal restrictions on maximum crew working time barred it from leaving Kuwait sooner. Passengers would be put up a hotel in the meantime, it said.
Eurowings is a subsidiary of German air carrier Lufthansa. It began offering direct flights from Cologne to Salalah in October.
Tal Muscal, a spokesman for Lufthansa, confirmed the flight was diverted and that no explosives were found on the plane.
"I do know there is nothing on board," he said.
A statement from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) of Kuwait, published on state news agency KUNA, confirmed no explosives were found on board.
A Eurowings spokesman said passengers would be flown back to Germany from Kuwait on the same plane, an A330 jet. The pilot and relevant authorities had decided on an emergency landing as a preventive measure, he said, but declined to give further details of the incident.
(With inputs from Reuters)
