Pilot held after allted shoe-bomb comment in airport

NEW YORK -- An Air France pilot was arraigned on felony charges Sunday after allegedly telling a security screener he had a bomb in his shoe.

No explosives were found on the pilot or the plane, but the New York-to-Paris flight he was scheduled for as a co-pilot was cancelled.

Philippe Rivere, 50, was charged with two counts of falsely reporting an incident. He could face a seven-year prison term if convicted on the first-degree count, said Patrick Clark, a spokesman for the Queens district attorney.

Queens Criminal Court Judge Deborah Stevens Modica set bail at $7,500 and ordered Rivere to return to court Aug. 22.

A telephone message left with Rivere's lawyer, Florence Morgan, was not immediately returned.

Airport security screeners have paid close attention to passengers' shoes since December 2001, when British citizen Richard Reid was arrested after trying to light explosives hidden in his shoes on a Paris-to-Miami flight. Reid pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison.

Rivere was at a security checkpoint Friday at John F. Kennedy International Airport when he allegedly said he had a bomb in his shoe, Port Authority spokesman Tony Ciavolella said. Ciavolella would not say whether Rivere could have been joking.

"It's not very often that you find a co-pilot making such inappropriate comments," Transportation Security Administration spokeswoman Lauren Stover told The New York Times. "We have zero tolerance for those kinds of comments."

Jim Faulkner, an Air France spokesman, apologized for the inconvenience to passengers.