An Olympic Airways flight bound for New York made an emergency landing in south-western Ireland today after a bomb threat was made to an Athens newspaper.

It is the second New York-bound service run by the airline to be disrupted after a threat was made in Greece.

The Airbus A340 with 295 passengers and 12 crew on board touched down at Shannon airport shortly before 5.00pm.

"What we are going to do is evacuate the passengers and security screen all of them, and it will be a matter for the police then what they are going to do with the aircraft," a spokeswoman for the airport said.

As the aircraft prepared to land, a massive security operation swung into action at Shannon. Police were scrambled to the airport and all other inbound flights were diverted

Emergency personnel, an army bomb disposal team and local hospitals were all put on standby.

French air traffic controllers alerted Irish authorities at around 3.00pm that a suspect package was on board the flight to JFK. A Shannon airport spokesman, Cecil McDonagh, said the plane continued westward through Irish airspace before the pilot decided to make the emergency landing.

An Olympic Airways spokeswoman, Melina Pitta, said: "The newspaper got a call at 1.45pm UK time saying a bomb was on board and would explode in an hour. Nothing has happened.

"After a meeting it was decided the plane would make an emergency landing at Shannon as it was the nearest airport."

The incident follows the diverting to Stansted in Essex on Sunday of a New York-bound Olympic Airways jet after a different Athens newspaper received a bomb warning. Subsequent checks revealed no devices and the flight left for New York yesterday.

David Learmount, operations and safety editor of Flight International magazine, said that the airline had to take the second threat seriously, even though the first was a hoax.

"What the worry is now is that this could spark off copy-cat actions that could disrupt airline services. Certainly, security at Athens airport has improved immeasurably from what it used to be like, but even so you can see why Olympic would want to take no chances," he said.

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