A Chinese man in debt made a hoax bomb call forcing a domestic flight to make an emergency landing for a safety check, as a desperate measure to keep away his creditor from coming to collect his dues.
Xiong Yi, 29, who was arrested in the southern city of Dongguan, Guangdong Province, for making an anonymous phone call stating that explosives would be detonated on a Shenzhen Airlines flight 45 minutes after its take-off, confessed to his crime.
The plane, bound for Shenzhen from Xiangyang, Hubei Province, was forced to make an emergency landing at Wuhan airport.
The call turned out to be a hoax as Police found no dangerous items on board after inspecting the plane.
Xiong told police that he was trying to stop the creditor to whom he owed about USD 38,000 from coming to collect his dues, state-run news agency Xinhua quoted police as saying.
He resorted to the desperate measure as his creditor told him about his trip to Dongguan to collect the money. It was not clear though whether the creditor was on the same flight.
Xiong said he did not realise that the false threat could cause such serious consequences and also he was drunk before making the call.
The airport and Shenzhen Airlines said yesterday that they were calculating the financial losses caused by the incident.
More than 30 vehicles and 200 people, including public security officers, fire fighters, medical staff, flight managers and armed police, were mobilised in response to the hoax call.
The police said Xiong might face at least five years in jail for fabricating and spreading terror information that seriously disturbed public order.
The incident was the second to occur within the week. An Air China flight from Beijing to New York was forced to return to Beijing on August 29 after receiving a security threat.