Cargo Bay Problems Forced Landing

A Northwest Airlines DC-10 enroute from Mumbai, India to Amsterdam, Netherlands, was forced to make an emergency landing Sunday after the cockpit crew got a warning light indicating a possible fire in the cargo hold. No one was hurt and the aircraft eventually continued to its destination.

But you can bet there were some tense moments aboard the aircraft, in Tehran and in Washington.

The fire indication turned out to be a false alarm, according to an NWA spokesman in Minnesota. None of the 255 people on board was hurt.

US carriers don't normally serve Iran because of sanctions that date all the way back to the 1979 hostage crisis, when 52 US embassy employees were held for 444 days as a political revolution shook the Middle Eastern country.

Tension mounted at the State Department in Washington as the DC-10 remained on the ground for seven hours. But there was no trouble. Instead, there was a negotiation.

"A lot of the delay in Tehran was just in negotiating and purchasing fuel in a place that we normally do not divert to," NWA spokesman Jeff Smith told the Associated Press.

FMI: www.northwest.com