Air France has suffered a string of worrying attempts to sabotage its planes apparently by radicalised ground staff - including a bid to cut communication between the cockpit and engines - according to French reports, reports The Telegraph.
French intelligence is on tenterhooks after a series of incidents involving Air France planes taking off from Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport, according to Le Canard Enchainé, the investigative and satirical weekly.
"We have noted numerous anomalies before commercial flights," a French intelligence source told the paper. "They appear to be attempts at sabotage," the source is cited as saying, adding that "ten people are currently under surveillance" in the company.
The most worrying, the paper reported, was an apparent attempt to disable the "engine relay" linking the cockpit to the engines on several planes. Thankfully pilots detected the problem after an alarm went off while they were going through their pre-flight check list.
According to Le Canard, an intelligence investigation swiftly led them to the suspected saboteur - a French employee and Muslim convert who "vanished" to Yemen just as agents homed in on him. His wife continues to run a Koranic school near Orly, Paris' other main airport.
In more "low level" incidents of sabotage, around 40 planes were daubed with "Alahu akbar" (God is great) on the fuel filler flap, causing one pilot to refuse to take off when he detected the graffiti.