Air France resumed Paris-Los Angeles flights today after a terror scare that grounded the
carrier's US-bound flights over Christmas.
Air France flight AF068 for Los Angeles left Roissy Charles de Gaulle this afternoon, delayed from its scheduled departure time for nearly three hours due to extra security checks.
Fears of an attack on a civilian plane eased somewhat after it emerged yesterday that checks by French intelligence had found no links to radical groups among passengers booked to fly on six cancelled Air France flights on December 24 and 25.
US officials have warned that militants might still be plotting a Christmas repeat of the September 11 attacks which killed around 3,000 people and for which the United States holds Osama bin Laden's radical Islamic al Qaeda network responsible.
A US official said "credible, reliable" intelligence reports had been relayed to France in the run-up to Christmas saying extremist groups were planning "near-term simultaneous attacks" that could be on a scale of the September 11 attacks.
The DST French counter-intelligence service questioned a number of people on passenger lists, but found no evidence of members of radical Islamist groups.
Nine people on the passenger list for Air France flight
AF068 on December 24 were questioned - four of them American, two German, one Algerian, one French and one Belgian - and then released, an interior ministry spokesman said.
French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin decided to cancel the Christmas Eve and Christmas Day flights to Los Angeles, despite checks proving negative, to eliminate any trace of risk.
The terror alert was discussed by US Secretary of State Colin Powell and French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin by telephone on Wednesday, US and French officials said.