A Chinese airline was forced to divert a flight after receiving a "threatening message", state media said Friday, in the second such incident to hit the fast-growing aviation market in two days.
A Shenzhen Airlines flight bound for the southern boomtown Shenzhen was diverted to Wuhan in central Hubei province shortly after taking off from Xiangfan city on Thursday evening, the official Xinhua news agency said.
Police are investigating the incident which comes a day after an Air China plane bound for New York was forced to return to Beijing after receiving a similar unspecified threat.
Shenzhen Airlines did not reveal the number of people on board or the nature of the threat, which was received mid-air, Xinhua said, prompting the airline to divert the plane to Wuhan "out of concern for passenger safety".
In June, six members of China's Uighur minority tried to hijack a Chinese domestic flight departing from a restive city in the far-western Xinjiang region, but crew members and passengers thwarted them, authorities said.
The Tianjin Airlines plane, bound for the Xinjiang capital of Urumqi, returned safely to the airport in Hotan city after a struggle between the hijackers and the crew members and passengers.
-AFP
