Air France flight declares midair emergency after two passengers missing

An Air France flight returned to Paris after declaring a midair emergency - when two passengers were found to be missing.

Flight AF990A was travelling from Paris to Johannesburg, South Africa, at 9am on Wednesday morning when, 45 minutes into the service, the plane started to head back to Charles De Gaulle airport, reports the Mirror.

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Cabin crew had found there were four bags on board that weren't matched to passengers.

The plane was forced to turn back for security reasons, and it emerged that the bags belonged to two passenger who were in transit from London Heathrow, but who had missed their connecting flight to South Africa, reports AirLive.net.

An Air France spokesman told the site: "The crew of flight AF990A from Paris Charles de Gaulle (CDG) to Johannesburg (JNB) on 14 October decided to apply the precautionary principle and return to Paris CDG after 45 minutes flight time for checks linked to the matching of the passenger list and the baggage loaded in the hold.

"Flight safety is Air France's priority and was never questioned, as the 4 bags concerned had been scanned on departure from London Heathrow (LHR) and were in transit through Paris Charles de Gaulle (CDG)."

Eyewitness News reports that the flight had actually been due to take off on the evening of Tuesday 13 October, but the flight had been delayed for 10 hours following a technical fault.

The two incidents were not connected.

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