Israeli jet fighters forced a Lufthansa passenger plane bound for Tel Aviv to land in Cyprus today due to a bomb threat.
Lufthansa said it had not judged the threat to be serious but that Israel had insisted on diverting the plane which was carrying 300 passengers.
Flight 686 from Frankfurt, a Boeing 747-400, landed safely in Larnaca and security officials were preparing to check it, police in Cyprus said. Lufthansa said the threat had been called in to the airline in Germany.
It is the sixth time in just over a week that a plane has been diverted in Europe due to a security scare.
Witnesses said the plane arrived just after 12 p.m Irish time at the coastal air terminal in Larnaca, some 45 kilometres south of the capital, Nicosia, where passengers disembarked.
A police source in Nicosia said security officials would wait for a "safety period" of 90 minutes from the time the threat was phoned in before boarding the plane to make checks.
On Monday, a Singapore Airlines plane, was diverted to Britain's Manchester airport after a bomb threat on a flight to New York.
A Greek Olympic Airlines flight from Athens to London was also forced to land on the island of Corfu shortly after take off because of a bomb threat.
Last Thursday, a British Airways flight from Berlin to London was diverted to Amsterdam.
Two other Greek Olympic Airlines planes flying from Athens to New York were diverted to Britain and Shannon at the end of last month.