Halfway down the Danube

Bomb threat, the Romanian version

So David and I arrived from Germany on Sunday, at 3:15 pm. Our flight landed, touched a little hard but no problem. We got off the plane and to my delight I found the stroller waiting outside the airplane door (not necessarily a given). I strapped David in and walked to the passport control. A long line but we were waived to the Diplomatic passport control and got through in no time. I expected to be out of the terminal and reunited with husband and oldest child in less than fifteen minutes.

The walk from the passport control to the baggage claim area is about 100 meters. Down a little ramp, around a ninety degree corner to your left, and then either walk or take the transport belt to the automatic doors that will open to the baggage claim area.

I got exactly as far as to the corner. There was a backlog. I mean, the entire corridor was packed with people. Packed. The transport belt had been closed off, and one could see that the doors to the baggage area were closed too. That was all we saw and all we knew. It was the first time I had ever seen anything like this, and I've been landing at Otopeni airport (oops, make that Henri Coanda Airport) many, many times.

I assumed that the doors were broken, that some high ranking politician had arrived, something like that. I even tried to wiggle my way through in a Romania fashion -- "my baby has a poopy diaper, I need to change him really badly, can you let me go through to the bathroom?". I knew there were no bathrooms on this side of the passport control, so it seemed a good scam. Oh, and David was very poopy, and very obviously so. When that didn't work, I started to worry a little bit. Babies usually get you everywhere, and poopy ones even more so. And then I called Doug to tell him about the delay, and he said, "the entire terminal is sealed off, I'm not allowed to park, I can't even get close".

Oh.

At the corner where we were standing, there was a little booth with an official. He was grilled, by all of us. He didn't know a thing. I said, "So, is there a bomb threat?" which for some reason seemed amusing to us. He shrugged and looked embarrassed. That, we found less amusing. I changed David right there on the floor. It did give us some breathing room, if you wanted to breathe that air...

During the next half hour, we only heard announcements of planes landing. London, Amsterdam, Brussels. (I think, it's hard to remember.) Rumors began to fly. Bomb threat, yes. An abandonned suitcase in the terminal. No, a security problem on a plane. Yes, it was the plane to Chisinau. Of course, Moldova. They were always causing problems, the Moldovans, everybody knows that. My argument that a plane to somewhere wasn't likely to be the problem, since we were in the arrival terminal (the departure terminal being a separate building), only increased the confusion.

I have to say that the general mood was pretty upbeat, considering that there might have been a bomb nearby. I think everybody had the same thought as I did -- who would care to bomb Bucharest airport? One man handed out "Merci" chocolates that were clearly intended for someone waiting outside the terminal. Another man gave me a bottle of water for David. Children started playing with each other. People smiled.

I have to say that I never took the bomb threat seriously. I mean, Romanians may not be the world's most efficient people but surely they wouldn't let a plane full of people walk smack into a bomb, right? There were no new passengers joining us, BTW, so the planes that landed after us weren't even deboarding. Hm.

After a while, the announcements changed. "Ladies and Gentlemen, Henri Coanda International Airport apologizes for the delay. Thank you for your understanding." I was glad the airport was apologetic but I would have been grateful for some more information.

After about an hour in that hot, stinking corridor (a mass of sweating people will do that and David's diaper wasn't making things better), suddenly it was all over. We poured into the arrival hall, the bags were already there, nobody at customs even glanced at any of the luggage hauled by people who were just frantic to get out. I could have made a fortune smuggling just about anything. Oh, well.

We never were told what had been going on. My nanny saw it on the news in the evening, though. Here's what AP has to say about it:

Plane Bound for Israel Forced to Land in Bucharest When Letter Warning of Bomb Found
The Associated Press
Published: Sep 15, 2002

JERUSALEM (AP) - An airplane flying from Amsterdam to Tel Aviv was forced to land in Bucharest on Sunday when a letter was found on the plane that said a bomb had been planted on the aircraft.

A Romanian bomb squad found nothing on the plane, said Israeli civil aviation spokesman, Pini Schiff. A search of passengers and luggage also revealed nothing, Schiff said.

It was not clear who wrote the letter, who found it, or what language it was in.

The plane belonged to a Dutch charter company, Transavia, Dutch border police said.

About three hours into the flight, the pilot announced there was a technical problem and said he was landing in Bucharest, said Israeli passenger Itai Yona. After an emergency landing on a special strip opened for the airplane, the pilot told the passengers before they disembarked about the letter and its warning.

"It was a little tense but we remained relatively calm and got off the plane very quickly," Yona said.

The passengers were slated to board a Bucharest-Tel Aviv flight of the Israeli airline, El Al, later Sunday, the radio said. Israeli authorities granted special permission for the flight since it was slated to land in Tel Aviv an hour after the airport would close for the Yom Kippur holiday, or Day of Atonement, Israel's Channel Two TV reported.

AP-ES-09-15-02 0447EDT

Posted by claudia at September 14, 2004 09:14 AM