Feared hijacked plane lands in Amsterdam

A plane with 180 passengers on board has landed at Amsterdam-Schiphol airport with a possible hijacking in progress, the Dutch military police said on Wednesday.

"The plane has landed at Schiphol. There is a possible hijacking and the police have surrounded the plane," an official of the royal Dutch military police told AFP. "We are trying to make contact with the people in the plane."

But Spanish airline Vueling denied on Wednesday that one of its planes with 180 passengers aboard was the subject of a hijacking attempt in the Netherlands.

"It's not true," an airline spokeswoman said without giving further details, after the Dutch military police said the plane had landed at Amsterdam-Schiphol airport with a possible hijacking in progress.

Earlier, the Dutch Defence Ministry sent two F-16 fighters to intercept a Vueling airplane thought to be carrying hostages on board that was bound for Amsterdam's Schiphol airport from Malaga, Dutch website nu.nl reported on Wednesday.

 Neither Schiphol airport nor the Dutch Defence Ministry were immediately available to comment. A Vueling spokeswoman could not confirm the report.

Amsterdam airport part closed by WWII bomb scare

Earlier, authorities evacuated parts of Amsterdam's Schiphol airport on Wednesday after workers found an unexploded World War Two bomb, forcing airlines to delay and cancel some flights.

The German bomb was discovered buried underground near the transport hub's busy Terminal C, which handles flights to most major European destinations, the Dutch Defence Ministry said in a statement.
 
Schiphol cleared and closed Terminal C, parts of Terminal D and one landing strip, an airport spokeswoman said.
 
A handful of European flights were cancelled, while several dozen were delayed, she added.
 
The 500kg explosive, uncovered during construction work, would be taken to a safe location and dismantled, the ministry said.

Schiphol was a military airport during World War Two. It was bombed both by the Germans at the start of the conflict and by Allied forces during the fighting.


Flights by airline KLM, which is part of Franco-Dutch group Air France KLM and uses Schiphol as its main hub, were affected, Schiphol's website showed.

Schiphol is Europe's fifth busiest airport and handled about 45 million passengers in 2010.

It is owned by the Dutch state, the cities of Amsterdam and Rotterdam, and French airports operator Aeroports de Paris .


 

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