Cargo plane bomb would have detonated over Canada, not the US, say new reports

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The US-bound flight that carried one of the parcel bombs from Yemen would likely have been detonated over Canada, not the US, had it not been intercepted late last month, according to new reports.

Previous reports, including a statement by British investigators, said the bomb could have been detonated over the east coast of the US, but flight data shows that UPS flight 232 does not always take the same path and would have actually been over Canada at the time, the Washington Post reports.

Online flight monitor flightaware.com indicates that the planned route for Oct. 29 would have passed by Newfoundland, Labrador, Quebec, and Ontario before reaching its US destination, according to the Canadian PostMedia news.

The bomb was one of two intercepted last month, one in East Midlands, England, and the other in the Dubai airport. Though the parcels were addressed to Jewish groups in Chicago, officials say they were prepared to detonate in flight.

The Yemen-based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has taken credit for the bombing attempts and vowed that it will send more.

"The assumption is they were trying to explode the plane over the US, but when you send something by cargo, you don't control all the variables," a US official said, according to the Washington Post. The Post adds that US and British officials had already concluded that the bombs were designed to go off in flight rather than their final destinations, though the latest news shows more precisely where they were intended to go off and suggests that the plotters had used Internet information to determine when the bomb would be over the US. The UPS flight’s destination was Philadelphia.

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