Two Air France planes travelling from the United States to Paris that were diverted on Tuesday night because of security threats have been cleared to fly following an investigation.
Air France Flight 65 from Los Angeles International Airport to Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris was diverted to Salt Lake City International Airport.
At about the same time a second flight, Air France 55, took off from Dulles International Airport outside Washington and was diverted to Halifax on Canada’s East Coast, officials said.
The FBI said it had found no credible threat of an explosion device on the aircraft that landed in Utah following an anonymous phone call, while The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) said investigators found no evidence after they searched the plane and luggage in Halifax.
Passengers got off both planes safely and were taken to terminals.
Passengers in the Utah airport were boarding their plane again around 11:30 p.m., Salt Lake airport spokeswoman Bianca Shreeve said.
RCMP Constable Mark Skinner said there were 262 people onboard the plane which landed in Canada, which also received an anonymous threat.
He said: “We received a complaint of a bomb threat and we responded to it.”
Peter Spurway, a Halifax Stanfield International Airport spokesman, said that passengers will go through Canadian customs, pick up their baggage and be provided hotel accommodation overnight.
“Air France will make a decision as to when it will depart,” he added.
Keith Rosso, from Santa Monica, California, was on the flight from Los Angeles with his fiancée and said that “everything was smooth, everything was great, everything was going swell”, for the first two hours.
“The flight attendants quickly came by and cleared plates, then there was an announcement that we were making an emergency landing and that the flight attendants were trained exactly for situations like this,” he said.
An Air France spokesman said that both flights had been the “subjects of anonymous threats received after their respective take-offs”.
Tension has been growing in the US after the terorrist attacks in Paris on Friday night, and the news that the Russian jet that crashed in Egypt was indeed brought down by a bomb.
President Obama criticised Republicans who have insisted on barring Syrian refugees from entering the country and said that their words were offensive and “it needs to stop”.
“Apparently they’re scared of widows and orphans coming into the United States of America,” he said. “We are not well served when in response to a terrorist attack we descend into fear and panic.”
Mr Obama, who was speaking during a meeting with President Aquino of the Philippines, has pledged to bring 10,000 Syrian refugees to the US in the next year.
Republicans in Congress and on the presidential campaign trail have spoken out against the plans.
Paul Ryan, the House Speaker, and Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, called for at least a temporary suspension of the plans to address the threat posed by Isis. Mr Obama pointed out that he had been waiting for a year and a half for Congress to approve a new war powers resolution to counter the Isis threat and questioned their newfound haste to solve the purported threat of innocent people fleeing war.
Mr Obama also said that it takes 18 to 24 months to clear a refugee for entry into the United States, following vetting by US intelligence and other agencies, plus the use of biometrics.
There were also signs, however, that Democrats may abandon their leader on the issue. Chuck Schumer, a senior Democrat, said that a pause in accepting Syrian refugees “may be necessary”, while Maggie Hassan, a Democrat governor who is running for Senate, said that she wanted more information on what measures were being taken before she would be happy to take Syrian refugees.
Since the Syrian civil war started in 2011 the US has taken about 2,500 refugees from the country. Of those, about half were children and about 2 per cent were single males of combat age, according to State Department officials.