HE WAS shocked when he received an SMS message from his girlfriend at 8.20pm last night.

It said: "What's happening? In Johor. They redirected us. Cannot land?"

She was due to have landed at Changi Airport at 8pm on Royal Brunei Airlines flight BI423, but said that her flight had been redirected to Johor.

The sales manager, 24, had been in Brunei on a business trip and was returning home.

Her producer-boyfriend, who wanted to be known only as Mr Chin, thought that "she would be happily shopping at duty free already".

Worried, he contacted online portal Stomp and my paper to share his story.

He said: "I called the airline, and someone told me that they didn't know what was going on.

"They said there was a military manoeuvre... forced the plane to re-route. And that's all they know and that things are beyond their control."

He called again and was told that "there was some emergency landing because an unknown aircraft was being escorted... forced them to land elsewhere".

The two who answered the phone "didn't want to give their names", he said. my paper got the same response when it called the airline too.

When my paper called the Changi Airport customer service department at about 9.30pm, the officer who answered said that there had been no "military manoeuvre and the airport or the airport runways have not closed". "The flight has been delayed, please contact the airline," she said.

She added, however, that many people had been calling to clarify the issue.

The Ministry of Defence was contacted by my paper but, at press time, it had not responded.

Mr Chin's girlfriend said the plane landed safely in Singapore at about 10pm.

estheray@sph.com.sg