SOURCE: The Garden Island http://www.kauaiworld.com/articles/2004/06/22/news/news02.txt Bomb threat delays Kaua?i flight By Tom Finnegan ? The Garden Island A call that a bomb was on-board an outgoing Aloha Airlines flight caused delays at Lihu?e Airport Sunday night when safety officials removed the plane from the runway and evacuated it. The flight, Number 78 and destined for Honolulu, was delayed for nearly two hours, but all other flights remained on schedule. "No other flight or airport operations were affected," said state Department of Transportation public information officer, Scott Ishikawa. "We tried to deal with it as best we could." The threat, phoned in to the Aloha Airlines baggage claim office just after 8 p.m., forced officials to evacuate Aloha Flight 78, move it to a remote location on airport grounds, and search it before allowing passengers to return to the plane, said Ishikawa. Another Aloha flight was also delayed, said Nico Melendez, a Los Angeles-based spokesperson for the federal Transportation Security Agency, when passengers from the first flight were re-routed to the second plane. Flight 78, scheduled to leave Lihu?e at 8:20 p.m., departed instead at 10:28 p.m., said Stu Glauberman, spokesperson for Aloha Airlines. Citing company policy, he refused to comment further. "Just for the safety of passengers, we removed the aricraft off to a remote location at the airport" and searched it, said Melendez, the TSA spokesperson. "We take the necessary precautions whenever we can." A similar threat forced the closure of Kona International Airport for thirty minutes last Thursday, when someone phoned that there was a bomb on an incoming Island Air flight from Maui. Nothing was found. An investigation is ongoing, Ishikawa said. He would not comment on whether the threat was a rare ocurrence in Lihu?e or not.