Close call

Israeli warplanes nearly shot down an American airliner carrying passengers from Newark, N.J., to Tel Aviv yesterday when the pilot failed to respond as the plane approached the Israeli coast, an airport authority official said.
Two Israeli F-15 and two F-16 fighter planes were scrambled to intercept a Boeing 777 operated by Continental Airlines as it prepared to enter Israeli airspace without responding to control tower demands to identify itself, the official added.

"From the moment that we lost contact with (the jet) we treated the incident as a possible terror act. When the fighter jets approached the plane, they guided it west. It contacted us and that's how we were sure it was not a terror attempt," another source told Ynet News.