Yemen Flights to U.K. Suspended on Security Concern (Update2) 
 
 (Adds Yemenia says U.K. demands unrealistic in sixth paragraph.) 
 
 By Khaled Abdullah and Henry Meyer 
 
 Jan. 20 (Bloomberg) -- Yemen’s national carrier, Yemenia, suspended its direct flights to the U.K. after refusing British demands to add an unscheduled stopover for extra security checks. 
 
 The U.K. wants Yemenia to schedule a stop for the flight to London’s Heathrow airport in Paris or Cairo, where the plane will be emptied and passengers and luggage will undergo security checks, Yemenia spokesman Khaled Al-Kainayee said in a phone interview from Sana’a. Today’s flight was canceled, he said. 
 
 “We have agreed with Yemenia Airlines -- pending enhanced security -- that they suspend their direct flights to the U.K. from Yemen with immediate effect,” U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown told lawmakers in London today. “We are working closely with the Yemeni government to agree what security measures need to be put in place before flights are resumed.” 
 
 The Yemeni branch of al-Qaeda said it was behind a Dec. 25 plot in which Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was charged with trying to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight on its approach to Detroit. 
 
 Several hundred al-Qaeda members in remote tribal areas of Yemen may be preparing for attacks similar to last month’s plane plot in the U.S. and elsewhere, President Barack Obama’s assistant for homeland security and counterterrorism, John Brennan, said on Jan. 3. 
 
 Unviable 
 
 The U.K. request for an additional stopover would have added two or three hours to the service and rendered it unviable, Farouk Burhan, a manager at Yemenia’s London office, said in a phone interview. 
 
 “We ourselves are very concerned by security measures,” he said. “They asked us to do these things, but it’s not realistic, we cannot do it. Nobody would fly, the plane would be empty.” 
 
 The carrier operates two flights a week on the route, which currently has a brief stopover in Cairo for nine months of the year in the off-peak season during which passengers don’t disembark, said Burhan. 
 
 Brown said the U.K. will create a “no-fly list” of terrorist suspects and a second list of those who will be subject to increased security screening prior to boarding flights heading to Britain. The nation’s three intelligence agencies will focus on investigating individuals “long before” they reach the country, he said. 
 
 “We and our allies are clear that the crucible of terrorism on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border remains the number one security threat to the west,” Brown said. “But at the same time we must recognize that al-Qaeda’s affiliates and allies, pushed out of Afghanistan and under increasing pressure in Pakistan, are seeking to exploit other areas with weak governance like parts of Yemen, Somalia and the Sahel.” 
 
 --With assistance by Stephen Rothwell and Kitty Donaldson in London. Editors: James Hertling, Andrew Atkinson 
 
 To contact the reporters on this story: Khaled Abdullah in Sana’a at kabdullah2@bloomberg.net; Henry Meyer in Dubai at +971-50-294-1951 or hmeyer4@bloomberg.net 
 
 To contact the editor responsible for this story: Peter Hirschberg at +972-2-640-1104 or phirschberg@bloomberg.net ||||| Direct flights to the U.K. from Yemen were suspended Wednesday, part of a broad drive to improve airport security following the failed Christmas Day attack on an airliner bound for Detroit. 
 
 View Full Image Reuters Passengers at San'a International Airport; Yemenia airlines refused a U.K. request for more security measures. 
 
 Prime Minister Gordon Brown also said a new "no-fly" list will be created to stop terror suspects aiming to travel to the U.K., while other individuals would be subjected to extra security measures. 
 
 The moves recognize the rising threat from militants based in Yemen and affiliated with al Qaeda. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian man charged in the Detroit plot, told officials he was in contact with al Qaeda operatives in Yemen, which Mr. Brown called "both an incubator and potential safe haven for terrorism." 
 
 A spokesman for Yemenia, the Yemeni national airline, said the U.K. had asked for London-bound Yemenia flights to undergo additional security measures in Paris or Cairo. The spokesman didn't elaborate on why the two cities were selected. 
 
 "They wanted planes to be emptied and searched [and] passengers and luggage to go through security checks," he said. Those demands were unacceptable and the airline had decided to suspend flights, he said. 
 
 A spokesman for the U.K. Department of Transport declined to comment. 
 
 Mr. Brown—speaking in the House of Commons after meeting with military, intelligence and border-security chiefs—said the U.K. was working closely with the Yemeni government to agree on "what security measures need to be put in place before flights are resumed." U.K. officials are currently in the Yemeni capital San'a to help improve aviation security, a spokesman said. 
 
 The prime minister said the government was introducing a new "no-fly list" of terror suspects barred from entering the U.K. That would be complemented by a larger list of suspect individuals who would be subject to special measures, including expanded screening, before boarding flights bound for the U.K. 
 
 He also said that by year-end, the U.K. would be able to check all people planning to travel to the U.K. from other countries, including transit passengers, against a Home Office watch list a day before they travel. 
 
 Western governments are scrambling to tighten security since the Christmas Day plot, which President Barack Obama said had exposed a "systemic failure" in sharing and acting upon intelligence about terror suspects. 
 
 Mr. Abdulmutallab had a multiple-entry visa to the U.S. that wasn't revoked even after his father, a prominent Nigerian banker, allegedly warned the U.S. authorities about his son's growing radicalism. The suspect, who had studied in London for three years, had been refused a U.K. visa last May after trying to enter the country to study at a college that turned out to be bogus. 
 
 Mr. Brown also reiterated that new body scanners would be introduced in U.K. airports starting next week, and promised an increase in testing for traces of explosives and the use of sniffer dogs. The government would, he said, also demand tougher security guarantees in international airports from which there are flights to the U.K. 
 
 Write to Guy Chazan at guy.chazan@wsj.com and Summer Said at summer.said@dowjones.com
– The British government yesterday ordered an immediate halt to direct flights from Yemen to the UK as a security precaution. Prime Minister Gordon Brown, describing the country as "both an incubator and potential safe haven for terrorism," also announced the creation of an expanded no-fly list of people with suspected terror links, the Wall Street Journal reports. The halt to Yemen flights is pending enhanced security precautions on incoming flights from the nation, Brown said. The UK wants flights from Yemenia, Yemen's national airline, to stop in Cairo or Paris for extra security checks, but the airline has opted to cancel the flights instead. "We ourselves are very concerned by security measures,” a Yemenia Airlines official tells BusinessWeek. “They asked us to do these things, but it’s not realistic. We cannot do it. Nobody would fly, the plane would be empty.”