Transportation Security Administration spokeswoman Yolanda Clark says officials also had found and removed an unidentified backpack from the jet before it left Atlanta. She described the jet, United Flight 351, as secure and said it was diverted to Dallas, ``out of an abundance of caution.''
Clark says the aircraft is secure. She says there was no indication that the hand-held computer was being used as an explosive device or trigger.
The flight was diverted on the fifth anniversary of the September eleventh, 2001, terror attacks. U.S. Northern Command spokesman Lieutenant Colonel John Cornelio says authorities decided NOT to send military fighter aircraft to escort the jet, as is routine during an emergency.
United spokeswoman Robin Urbanski says 50 people were aboard the Airbus 319. The passengers were being rescreened after getting off the plane in Dallas.
Urbanski says the backpack belonged to a woman who had been a passenger on an earlier flight on the same jet.
(Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
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