Flight scare in Israel after crash images sent to passengers

A Turkish Airlines carrier flight from Tel Aviv to Istanbul was sent back to the terminal after passengers reported receiving images of crashed planes on their mobile phones as the service taxied for takeoff. 

Security teams removed a number of people from the flight suspected of sending the pictures, the Israel Airports Authority said Tuesday. They were taken for questioning and the plane was approved for departure. 

The images were sent using Apple Inc.’s AirDrop service, which facilitates file transfers between Apple devices, Ynet news website reported, without saying where it got the information. That means only iPhone users received them. 

The pictures showed a 2009 crash of a Turkish plane in the Netherlands and a 2013 accident in San Francisco, the website said. They were accompanied by footage from inside the plane, a police spokesperson said. 

Police detained nine people on suspicion of sending the photos to passengers, a police spokesperson said. The detainees were from a Western Galilee village in the north of Israel. They are being questioned on suspicion of disseminating false information that causes fear and panic among the public.