Hoaxer sparks bomb alert at Manchester Airport

A bomb alert on board a plane which landed at Manchester airport yesterday proved to be a hoax.

Nearly 500 passengers and crew on the Pakistan International Airlines flight from Karachi to New York had to be evacuated.

A man claiming to belong to an Islamic extremist group made a number of calls to the airline warning that a device would explode over the mid-Atlantic. But a search of the aircraft revealed no trace of a device.

The flight eventually left Manchester for New York's JFK airport at 5.40am today, more than 18 hours later than scheduled.

There were no reports of injuries or panic during the evacuation.

The 462 passengers - mostly Pakistani nationals - and 17 crew members were said to have been kept fully aware of the emergency and were accommodated in hotels near the airport.

The airport was not closed and the alert caused minimal disruption to flights.