BA tries to reassure passengers after terror 'threat'

British Airways attempted to reassure passengers today after US officials said they had new intelligence that its flights from London to the US could be terrorist targets.

British Airways Flight 223 from London to Washington, was one of the flights which was again the subject of concern as it had been when the US terror alert was raised to orange, or high, before Christmas.

However, a BA spokesman said today: “Safety and security is of paramount importance to us and we speak continually to the UK and US governments.

“We would never choose to operate a flight unless it was completely safe to do so. We do not discuss specific intelligence reports for obvious reasons.”

Over the holidays, security was tightened around flights that concerned officials.

The fresh US intelligence was similar to that during the heightened terror alert which prompted US officials to ask for the cancellation of two British Airways flights from London to Washington and six Air France flights between Paris and Los Angeles, an official said.

Other flights were delayed for hours while passengers were checked against watch lists.

However, US officials have insisted the process of checking the backgrounds of airline passengers and crews has been improved to avoid a repeat of the long delays.

Officials stressed there was no specific information about what might be planned, only that BA flights from London and Air France flights from Paris to an unspecified US city were possible targets.

Brian Roehrkasse, Homeland Security Department spokesman, said there were no plans to raise the terror alert in the US because of the latest threats.

He said: “We remain concerned about al-Qaida’s desire to target aviation, especially international aviation.

“The US intelligence community continues to gather specific credible threat information on international flights, as we have done in an ongoing basis in the past few weeks.

“We have shared this information with our international partners, and will work with them to put in place the appropriate security measures.”

No flights have been delayed or cancelled due to the new threats, officials said.

However, a senior law enforcement official said US officials are talking to British and French authorities and no decisions have been made about delaying or cancelling future flights.

It is understood that BA flights operated as normal yesterday.