BERLIN
A Germanwings plane was evacuated on Sunday shortly before takeoff at Cologne airport after an unspecified bomb threat was made.
The airline said its plane scheduled to fly to Milan at 18:20 local time had cancelled its takeoff from Cologne airport shortly after leaving the gate, as the tower informed the pilots about a bomb threat notice.
“All the passengers and the crew have orderly left the plane. The relevant authorities are searching the plane with sniffer dogs,” the airline said in a written statement.
Special police teams searched the Airbus A320 plane for hours but did not find any bomb.
Germanwings announced late Sunday that the competent authorities could not find any suspicious material during their search of the cabins, cargo sections, and luggage.
It said the passengers flied to Milan late Sunday with another aircraft arranged by the airline.
Germanwings under pressure
Germanwings and its parent company Lufthansa have been under intense pressure since the deadly plane crash in French Alps on March 24, which killed 144 passengers and six crew members on board.
The investigators believe the 27-year-old co-pilot Andreas Lubitz intentionally crashed the airplane, as the preliminary data retrieved from the black boxes showed that he locked his colleague out of the cockpit and then put the plane on a deadly path of descent.
Police found medical documents in Lubitz’s house last month showing he had suicidal tendencies in the past, and also recently received treatment for severe depression.
Soon after the plane crash Germanwings and Lufthansa claimed that the co-pilot was "100 percent fit to fly without any restrictions."
But Lufthansa confirmed in a written statement last week that an internal investigation revealed Lubitz had informed the company in 2009 about his medical treatment for a "previous episode of severe depression."
The company promised to help prosecutors for the investigation by providing all relevant information.
The air disaster last week was one of the most tragic incidents in recent German history and the first deadly crash of a Germanwings plane since the low-budget airline was founded by Lufthansa in 2002.
