Bomb threat: Israelis evacuate plane via emergency chutes

Passengers complained of ‘chaos’ in the Krakow airport after flight ended with them jumping out of the plane. 

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Israeli passengers disembarked from their flight to Krakow, Poland, Saturday night via the emergency chutes following a bomb threat.

The Wizz Air plane landed on a secluded runway due a tip from “an anonymous source” that there was an explosive device on board, which “turned out to be false,” the airline said.

The authorities carried out the relevant safety checks and found nothing suspicious on the plane, stressing that “the safety and security of Wizz Air’s passengers and crew are our top priority.”

“We stayed on the runway for about half an hour,” said one passenger in a self-made video clip posted on Ynet. “They opened the chutes and we all jumped on them and then stood around. We didn’t know if it was an emergency or a security-related matter… All the emergency services arrived… It was one big mess.”

The unnamed man filmed his fellow passengers standing around on the tarmac in the dark, milling around.

Another passenger told Ynet that they were not being told what was going on.

“This is complete chaos and no one from the airline has spoken to us,” she said.

Bomb-sniffing dogs also checked the passengers themselves, but found no signs of explosives.

Uri Yerushalmi, a volunteer with the Lev Echad (Hebrew for ‘One Heart’) organization who was on his way to a humanitarian mission in Ukraine, told Kan News that after sitting on the plane for 30 minutes without reaching the terminal, the stewardesses simply told the passengers that they would be evacuating the plane.

“They starting yelling at everyone not to take anything with them and to go down the chutes,” he said. “In two minutes, everyone slid down and got out of the plane. After that, they told us that there had been a bomb threat.”

At 3 a.m., some six hours after landing, the passengers retrieved their suitcases and left the airport.