LONDON (Reuters) - Airports around the world were on top alert Monday after a failed attempt by a man with his shoes stuffed with explosives to blow up an airliner flying from Paris to Miami.
In Paris, where the man, believed to be British, boarded Saturday's American Airlines flight 63, more police with sniffer dogs were on patrol after what one security expert described as a catalog of blunders.
``We came within a hairsbreadth of that aircraft being in bits in the Atlantic and the water being full of bodies,'' Chris Yates, aviation expert at Jane's Intelligence Review, told Reuters.
The attempted mid-air attack evoked memories of the December 1988 bombing of a packed, transatlantic flight, which exploded over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, killing 270 people.
French ministers met Monday to discuss what went wrong on Saturday and how to prevent it happening again.
Officials at Switzerland's Zurich airport said they would adopt U.S. FAA-led security measures from Tuesday, meaning passengers on U.S. carriers would have to put their shoes as well as hand luggage through security scanners.
Italian airport security also went on alert after the bomb attempt which was foiled by a stewardess aided by a group of passengers and two doctors armed with sedatives.