Terrorism concerns cancel flight to Super Bowl city

A Continental Airlines flight to Houston, site of Super Bowl XXXVIII, was canceled Sunday after intelligence gathered in the past week identified possible al-Qaeda terrorist threats against specific airline flights. Four flights bound for the USA from Great Britain and France – British Airways Flight 223 from London to Washington Dulles, British Airways Flight 207 from London to Miami, Air France Flight 26 from Paris to Dulles, and Continental Flight 17 from Glasgow to Newark to Los Angeles – also were canceled Sunday as a result of intelligence. British Airways Flight 223 and Air France Flight 26 will not fly today. The threat against the flights was similar to information that triggered the Code Orange Alert over the Christmas and New Year’s holidays, six U.S. government officials familiar with the intelligence said. More than a dozen international flights to the USA were canceled during the holidays. Those threats included warnings against flights and their possible hijacking that stretched into early February. As was the case then, the latest intelligence did not identify the terrorists, mode of attack or targets, said the sources, whose work spans the government’s anti-terrorism effort. Sunday’s grounding of Continental’s Flight 1519 from Dulles to Houston was the first cancellation of a domestic flight because of safety concerns raised by the intelligence. Full Story