A BOEING 747 operated by the Greek airline Olympic Airways made an unscheduled landing in Rome yesterday following a bomb alert.
However, the authorities at Rome's Fiumicino airport said no device was found on the plane.
Rome airport officials said the Olympic Airways 747 plane was on a flight from Athens to New York via Ireland.
The jumbo jet, which had taken off from Athens at 1.10 p.m. (11.10 a.m. Irish time) with 370 passengers and 21 crew members aboard, landed after an anonymous caller told authorities at Athens airport there was a bomb on board.
The passengers and crew were evacuated and the plane isolated on a runway as bomb disposal experts checked for devices.
In Athens, an official from Olympic Airways said experts had found no bombs on board, and that the plane would continue its flight to New York.
Several bomb alerts, all of them false alarms, have been recorded at Rome Fiumicino airport since a TWA Boeing 747 crashed off the coast of Long Island two weeks ago on its way to Paris from New York, killing all 230 people on board.
The TWA Boeing 747 on flight 800 had come into New York's John F. Kennedy airport from Athens.