Turkish Airlines

Bomb threats forced two passenger planes en route to Frankfurt to make emergency landings in Hungary, and a third aircraft was searched on arrival in Germany. Hungarian police said they found nothing after searching a Turkish Airlines plane, which landed in Budapest, but had yet to examine luggage from the craft. No explosives were found on the two other aircraft, one a Lufthansa flight and another from Croatian Airlines.

A false reading from a faulty altimeter caused an autopilot to sharply slow a Turkish Airlines jet short of the runway last month, sending it plunging into a muddy field and killing nine people, Dutch investigators said. The flight carrying 135 passengers and crew crashed less than a mile from Amsterdam's Schiphol airport as it was landing.

The crew of a Turkish Airlines jet overpowered a passenger who burst into the cockpit during a flight today crying "I want to blow up this plane" and sprayed the pilots with a fire extinguisher, Anatolia news agency reported. The Boeing 727, with 81 passengers aboard, landed safely in Istanbul, its destination, the agency said. The flight originated in Frankfurt, West Germany. Anatolia said the passenger, a Turk, was disgruntled because his West German work permit had been canceled.

President Obama recently groused that no U.S. airport ranked among the world's top 25 airports. If you're a regular traveler to Los Angeles, you may be even more disappointed to learn that Los Angeles International Airport didn't even make the top 100. Obama was referring to a ranking released in April - the Skytrax World Airport Awards - that is based on a survey of 12.1 million travelers around the world. Out of 395 airports worldwide, LAX ranked 109th overall and 24th among 50 airports in North America.

Italian officials said they intended to prosecute a Turkish man for hijacking an airliner, despite his appeal for political asylum on the grounds that he was being persecuted as a Christian in his Muslim nation. The Turkish Airlines plane carrying 113 people was hijacked en route from Albania to Turkey. It landed in the southern Italian city of Brindisi after fighter jets escorted the aircraft there. A Brindisi prosecutor said suspect Hakan Ekinci also may be charged with terrorism.

A Turkish Airlines DC-10 carrying 233 people to Milan returned to the airport Tuesday shortly after takeoff when an engine failed, the Anatolia news agency reported. Pieces from the engine damaged a second engine on the jumbo jet, but the plane managed to land safely, the news agency said. A DC-10 has one engine on each wing and one engine on the tail section. The cause of the engine failure was not immediately known.

A man who tried to hijack a Turkish Airlines plane because he was depressed about being deported from West Germany was sentenced to eight years and four months in jail Monday, the Anatolian News Agency reported. Yusuf Orer, 21, told the Istanbul court he was demoralized about being deported when he tried to take over a Boeing 727 carrying 77 people on a flight from Frankfurt to Istanbul last June 28. He was overpowered by the crew after he entered the cockpit carrying a fire extinguisher.

Turkish Health Minister Bulent Akarcali said Sunday that the government plans to ban cigarette and alcohol sales to people aged under 18. Akarcali, who plans to puff his last cigarette on television this month as part of a campaign to persuade Turks to stop smoking, has already banned smoking on domestic Turkish Airlines flights.

Turkey today deported three U.S. citizens who were detained after proselytizing outside a movie theater showing the film, "The Last Temptation of Christ," a U.S. Consulate official said. David Kim Wilson, 35, of Chicago; his wife, Pamela Lynn Wilson, 32, of Des Moines, and Norma Cox, 45, of Chicago, were put on a Turkish Airlines flight to Athens. Cox had been teaching English in Istanbul since 1981, while the Wilsons were tourists, a consulate official said on condition of anonymity.