World
Updated : Jan 19, 2014, 08:35 AM IST
A bomb threat left in a Brazilian airport caused a TAM Airlines flight to make an emergency landing and briefly closed the airport in the Amazonian city of Manaus on Saturday, five months before the country hosts the World Cup soccer tournament. A note that said a bomb was onboard TAM flight 3540 was found in a bathroom at Brasilia's Juscelino Kubitschek airport, airport officials said.
That flight, which had already left Brasilia bound for Boa Vista, evacuated passengers via emergency slides when it landed on the runway at Eduardo Gomes airport in Manaus. The Manaus airport had reopened at 4 p.m. Brasilia time (1800 GMT) after no explosive device was found on the plane, a spokeswoman for the Infraero national airport authority said. She also said no other airports were affected.
TAM spokesperson Fernanda Feres said passengers on the affected plane had been rebooked on another flight leaving for Boa Vista, the capital of Roraima state, on Saturday. TAM is the local unit of LATAM Airlines Group