A Delta flight received a bomb threat shortly before landing at New York's JFK airport on Monday night, but no explosives were found upon inspection.
The threat came from an anonymous phone caller around 6 p.m., and suggested that there was a pipe bomb on Delta Flight 468, Port Authority spokesman Joe Pentangelo
told NBC News.
At the time, there were two flights using the flight number 468. The first was a Boeing 757 plane from San Francisco scheduled to land at 8 p.m. The second was a Boeing 777 plane scheduled to depart for Tel Aviv, Israel around 9:30 p.m.
It was unclear which plane the caller had referred to, so both were searched.
The Israel-bound flight was searched on the tarmac, cleared, and took off close to its scheduled time. The incoming San Francisco flight was directed to land away from the terminal, and all passengers were evacuated as quickly as possible upon touchdown.
"The captain, as calmly as he possibly could, said, 'We have some bad news. There's been a threat on this plane,'" said Austen Holman, 29, of New York. She said passengers had "no clue" there was a threat until they landed. When they did, they were told to leave all of their carry-on luggage aboard, and all 171 passengers quickly emptied out onto the runway.
"For the most part, everyone remained pretty calm," she said.
After both planes were searched, luggage was returned to the passengers, and the planes went back into rotation. The FBI's New York branch confirmed on Twitter that everything was "all clear" after several passengers documented their emergency deplaning.
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