The Boeing 777 Air France flight 463 from Mauritius to Paris was forced to land in the Kenyan city of Mombasa. Photo / AP
The Boeing 777 Air France flight 463 from Mauritius to Paris was forced to land in the Kenyan city of Mombasa. Photo / AP
A fake bomb planted on an Air France flight from Mauritius to Paris forced it to make an emergency landing in Kenya.
An object described by a Kenyan police official as looking like "a stopwatch mounted on a cardboard box" was found in a toilet on the Boeing 777 airliner, which was diverted to Mombasa, on the Kenyan coast.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorised to speak to the media, told the AP news agency that no explosives were found in the device.
Six passengers have been questioned over the scare.
A French security source in Paris said: "According to what we've heard, it was rigged up to look like a homemade bomb but it was not a bomb."
A French woman who was a passenger on the plane told Europe 1 radio that the device was "heard ticking".
The head of Air France, Frédéric Gagey, said it was a "false alert".
Mr Gagey, speaking to reporters in Paris, said: "All the information available to us now indicates that the object was not capable of causing an explosion." He declined to describe it as a fake bomb, but said it was a "homemade assembly of cardboard and a kitchen timer mechanism".
All 459 passengers and 14 crew members disembarked safely after Flight 463 landed at Moi International Airport in Mombasa at 12.37am local time yesterday.
An Air France spokeswoman in Paris said they were expected to leave for the French capital "at the end of the day".
The plane was carrying 459 passengers and 14 crew members on board. Photo / AP
Flight AF463 left Mauritius at 9pm local time and was due to arrive at Paris Charles de Gaulle at 5.50am local time.
One passenger, Benoit Lucchini from Paris, said: "The plane just went down slowly, slowly, slowly, so we just realised probably something was wrong.
"The personnel of Air France was just great, they were just wonderful. So they keep everybody calm. We did not know what was happening.
"So we secured the seat belt to land in Mombasa because we thought it was a technical problem but actually it was not a technical problem. It was something in the toilet. Something wrong in the toilet, it could be a bomb."
It is the third Air France flight to be diverted in recent weeks. Two other airliners flying from the United States to Paris were re-routed after the Paris attacks that killed 130 people and wounded hundreds more on November 13.
