DUBAI — An Etihad Airways flight from Cairo to Abu Dhabi was diverted to Al-Minhad Air Base in Dubai Sunday morning following a security alert.



The Airbus A321 (flight EY650), which departed Cairo at 3.49 a.m. local time (5.49 a.m. UAE), was carrying 128 passengers and seven crew, according to an Etihad Airways spokesperson.



A security alert was received by Etihad Airways at approximately 8.00 a.m. (UAE time), at which time the aircraft was diverted. It landed normally shortly after 9.00 a.m., after which passengers were disembarked from the aircraft at Al-Minhad Air Base.



Those with onward flight connections will be met at Abu Dhabi Airport and rebooked on the next available services.



Last month, Etihad flight EY-622 was on way to Seychelles from Abu Dhabi came tantalizingly close over Mumbai airspace with Emirates flight EK-706 heading to Dubai from Seychelles .



A glitch in the radar controller’s satellite transmission, which is used to communicate aircraft location to air navigators, led to the recent close shave between two flights — a Seychelles-bound Etihad flight and an Emirates flight heading to Dubai — that were carrying 400 passengers in Mumbai airspace, according to the probe by the Indian aviation regulator.



On March 29, a Mumbai air traffic controller asked the Etihad flight to climb 36,000 feet, without the knowledge that the Emirates plane was on the same flight level in the opposite direction. Almost set for a head-on collision, the flights changed course after the anti-collision alert rang inside both the cockpits, when the planes were merely 25 seconds away from each other, stated the probe report. — Agencies