A United Airlines Flight heading to LaGuardia was hastily diverted to Pittsburgh after pilots feared there was a “potential bomb” on board.
United Flight 2092 was heading to The Empire State from Chicago’s O’Hare Airport early Saturday when the pilots heard a beeping noise and decided to divert the flight, according to audio of the flight crew’s conversation posted to liveatc.com.
“We are going to have to start treating this as a potential bomb… we are going to need to go and start a diversion and get things settled. It’s a beeping noise, sequential, one beep per second,” a crewmember said.
The plane landed at Pittsburgh International Airport at 11:45 a.m., WCVB reported.
The Boeing 737‘s 159 passengers and 6 crew members exited the plane safely via slides and no injuries were reported, a United representative told The Post in a statement.
A firetruck and ambulance greeted the airplane as emergency officials helped the passengers and crew exit, and were seen leaving after everyone was successfully escorted.
The Pittsburgh FBI bomb technicians and Special Agents, local police and the Allegheny County bomb squad were on scene investigating, WCVB reported.
The Allegheny County Police Bomb Squad told the outlet its Explosive Ordinance Disposal team and bomb sniifing dogs conducted a sweep which had “negative results” for bombs.
“Our EOD team and K9s conducted a sweep of the aircraft, passengers and luggage with negative results,” the department told the outlet.
The Allegheny Police Department said the incident had been cleared, and United Airlines said that passengers took alternative flights to LaGuardia at 4:24 p.m.
The incident comes less than a month after an American Airlines flight heading from New York to Chicago had to make an emergency landing after a disorderly passenger threatened to “blow up the plane.”
AA flight 2819 left JFK airport American Airlines 2819, departed from John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City at 8:59 a.m. March 29 and was less than an hour away from Chicago when all hell broke loose.
“We hear this person in the back screaming, yelling, ‘No, no, no,’ and he can’t get off the plane, and he didn’t take his meds,” passenger Gerry Sutofsky recalled.
