A week after the Christmas Eve cancellation of six Air France flights from Paris to Los Angeles International Airport, authorities canceled Aeromexico's Flight 490 to LAX on New Year's Eve for fear it may have been targeted by Al Qaeda, federal law enforcement sources said.
The suspicion arose from the same intelligence that led authorities last week to cancel the Air France flights. One of those flights had been identified by terrorists and included passengers whose names were close to those of suspected Islamic militants, sources said. .
On Tuesday evening, an Air France flight was escorted to LAX by two U.S. fighter jets, according to city officials. It was the first time that military aircraft have been spotted escorting a commercial plane there since shortly after 9/11.
In the case of Wednesday's Aeromexico flight, the sources said, authorities did not have reason to suspect specific passengers. Flight 490 was scheduled to leave Mexico City at 5:05 p.m. and arrive in Los Angeles at 9 p.m. But Agustine Gutierrez Canet, Mexico's presidential spokesman, said the Department of Homeland Security told Aeromexico that for security reasons, Flight 490 would be denied landing rights. U.S. officials didn't specify what the security concerns were, he said. The passengers were allowed to leave on a later flight.
"Homeland Security should give an explanation why it denied landing rights and then accepted the same passengers on another flight to Los Angeles," Gutierrez Canet said.
U.S. authorities were given reason to suspect that an Aeromexico flight might be targeted over the New Year's holiday and decided to press for cancellation of Flight 490 as a precaution, sources said.
"Just because we don't have names that draw attention doesn't mean there isn't a concern," said one source. "Before Sept. 11, a lot of the hijackers who brought down those planes were unknown to us.
"If you have reason to believe something may happen on a flight, why not just cancel the damn thing?" said the source. "That makes it impossible to hijack."
About 30 flights leave Mexico City's airport for U.S. destinations each day. Last week, at the request of the Bush administration, the Mexican government began quietly deploying armed undercover police agents on selected U.S.-bound flights.
