A phone call — warning of a bomb on board a WestJet flight between Halifax and Edmonton — was made to a municipal airport in southern Ontario, airport officials said Monday.
WestJet Flight 391 was diverted to Saskatoon on Saturday after the Kincardine Municipal Airport received the call.
The airport’s manager said the call came at around 9:05 a.m. ET, while the flight was en route to Edmonton. The call was forwarded from his office to his truck.
“The caller was male, controlled tone of voice, simply advising that there was a bomb aboard a WestJet flight from Halifax to Edmonton, that the bomb was in the baggage department,” Blake Evans, the manager of the Kincardine Municipal Airport, said Monday.
“I wanted to — given the situation — collect as much information as I could from the caller, determining if I could, of course, his identity — which I could not. And the location from which he was calling, which I could not.”
Evans said the conversation lasted about four minutes. He said the person spoke fluent English with no detectable accent. When Evans pressed for more information, he said the caller hung up.
“There was no motivation that I detected in the conversation. There was no significant vindictiveness in his voice,” he said. “It was simply an advisory-type call.”
Police tracing call
After the threat was passed on to police, the flight was diverted and landed in Saskatoon around 9 a.m. CST.
Saskatoon police determined there was no explosive device on board. Police are currently investigating and trying to trace the call.
Airports say these incidents are not common. But Jock Williams, a retired fighter pilot and Transport Canada employee, disagrees.
“I’m going to estimate one a week in Canada, anyway, that some action is taken about,” he said. “There are always people who decide they’d like to get their name in the papers.”
Williams says there are methods and protocols for dealing with such calls, and he says crank callers are usually traced, caught and face stiff fines or a jail sentence.
“It’s serious stuff and you, having made that call and causing a diversion, are responsible,” he said. “It’s not a laughing matter. It’s a very serious federal crime.”
Williams calls the incident a nuisance call, designed to cost the airline thousands of dollars and other difficulties.
After the plane landed in Saskatoon, about 150 crew members and passengers safely disembarked.