Two U.S.-to-Paris Air France flights diverted due to threats

Show Caption Hide Caption 2 Air France planes diverted after threats Officials say two Air France flights bound for Paris from the U.S. were diverted because of threats on Tuesday night. One plane landed in Salt Lake City, Utah. The other landed in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Both planes have been cleared. (Nov. 18)

Two Air France flights flying from the U.S. to Paris were diverted to airfields in Utah and Canada Tuesday night due to anonymous threats.

The airline confirmed that a bomb threat prompted it to interrupt Air France Flight 65 headed from Los Angeles to Paris and divert it to Salt Lake City.

Meanwhile, Air France said it also diverted its Flight 55 that departed from Dulles Airport near Washington, D.C., for Paris and redirected it to Halifax in Nova Scotia, Canada, because of a similar threat.

Both planes were later cleared to fly by authorities.

In Salt Lake City, passengers were seen exiting the giant Airbus A380 plane and the FBI and airport police began investigating, according to local station KSL-TV.

Kathleen Ingley, 65, of Phoenix, said she and other passengers on Flight 65 were finishing dinner service when the air pressure began to change. Ingley, a freelance journalist and former Arizona Republic editorial writer, was flying to Paris to visit her daughter's family, a trip she makes three or four times a year.

Radar shows two Air France flights bound for Paris from the U.S. have been diverted; one to Halifax, one to SLC. pic.twitter.com/RQMGHMPA9b — Brad Heath (@bradheath) November 18, 2015

"And then the flight attendants told us we would be making an emergency landing," Ingley said by phone from the Salt Lake City International Airport. "They told us to put trays on the floor and tighten our seat belts and get anything out of the aisles. No one had any idea what the problem was. Every possible scenario runs through your mind."

Keith Rosso of Santa Monica, California, a passenger on the flight from Los Angeles with his fiancee, said “everything was smooth, everything was great, everything was going swell” for the first two hours of the flight, then things changed.

“The flight attendants quickly came by and cleared plates, then there was an announcement that we were making an emergency landing and that the flight attendants were trained exactly for situations like this,” Rosso told The Associated Press by phone from the airport.

He said he looked at the flight monitor at his seat and saw that “we had made a pretty sharp right turn — we had been almost near Canada — toward Salt Lake City.”

The jet made a quick descent toward the Utah capital, where it was greeted on the tarmac by more than a dozen emergency vehicles. Ingley said passengers exited the plane with their bags and were bused to another part of the airport to be interviewed and have their bags searched.

Officials on the ground at the airport told passengers that a bomb threat had prompted the emergency landing, Ingley said.

Recording artist Trevor Moran tweeted that he was on the flight.

PHOTO: One of diverted Air France flights in Salt Lake City, Utah on tarmac with police - @abc4utah pic.twitter.com/KsgCzVo6DP — Conflict News (@Conflicts) November 18, 2015

Air France posted a statement on Twitter late Tuesday saying both flights had been subjects of anonymous threats received "after their respective take-offs." It did not elaborate on the threats but said authorities would conduct an investigation to identify "the source of the telephone call."

In Salt Lake City, authorities found no credible threat, according to an FBI statement released late Tuesday night, and the jet departed at about midnight, airport spokeswoman Bianca Shreeve said.

And in Halifax, airport spokesman Peter Spurway told the AP that police had cleared the plane to fly again. He said passengers went through Canadian customs and were put up at hotels overnight. Later, the airline said that the passengers would leave Halifax on Wednesday evening.

The threats came after last week’s attacks in Paris that killed 129 people and heightened security concerns around the world.

Contributing: The Arizona Republic, The Associated Press