Flight returns to Salt Lake after scare over bag

A SkyWest Airlines flight bound for Houston Sunday morning returned to Salt Lake International shortly after takeoff because of a "suspicious bag" found on the plane.

Airport authorities would say only that the flight left Salt Lake around 10 a.m. Sunday morning with 78 passengers aboard and was back on the ground sometime after 11 a.m. At 11:30 a.m., a Salt Lake police K-9 unit was on the scene to investigate the suspicious item.

SkyWest spokeswoman Marissa Snow said the bag was "cleared" shortly after noon and that passengers would be returned to the terminal to be rescreened before reboarding the plane and continuing to Houston. Salt Lake International Airport spokeswoman Barbara Gann said the incident did not affect operations at the airport Sunday.

A Logan woman, who asked not to be identified, told the Deseret News her husband was aboard the flight on his way to a business conference in Houston. She said her husband told her the plane was diverted back to Salt Lake about 45 minutes after takeoff. The bag in question had been brought aboard by a man who got off the plane before it departed but left his bag behind.

Passengers on the flight were off-loaded onto a bus after the plane returned, and the man told his wife he could see "police and bomb-sniffing dogs" by the plane, which remained near a runway. The woman said flight attendants told passengers that diverting the flight was standard airline procedure in responding to the circumstances.

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