A 40-year-old man was due to appear before a prosecutor on the island of Kos yesterday on suspicion of causing a charter flight to make an unscheduled landing by claiming that there was a bomb on board the airplane, which he had allegedly been stopped from boarding because he was drunk.

The TUI Netherlands flight from Kos to Amsterdam carrying 288 passengers touched down in Athens at 9.30 p.m. on Sunday after someone rang the police on the Dodecanese island and said there was a bomb on board. The passengers evacuated the plane so police and sniffer dogs could search it. Nothing was found and the flight took off at just before 1 a.m. yesterday.

Police said the man, who was not named, had tried to board the plane in Kos but was stopped by airline staff because he allegedly appeared to be inebriated.