Flight CA981 Makes Emergency Return, Posts Containing "CA981 Official Flees Abroad" Disappear From Sina Weibo

On August 30, 2012, the state-sponsored People's Daily reported : An Air China flight heading to New York returned to Beijing last night after "receiving a threatening message." The Boeing 747 - flight CA981- landed at Beijing Capital International Airport at around 8:30pm about eight hours after it had set off for John F. Kennedy Airport. . . . . The airport later announced that "nothing abnormal has been found after the overall inspections." These screenshots were taken between 9:30 am and 2 pm on August 30, and show that a search for "CA981 Official Flees Abroad" (CA981 外逃官员) at 9:30 returned 10 results. For the same search at 12:30 Sina says no search results can be found. Less than ten minutes later Sina now finds one result, but by 2 pm that result has disappeared as well and Sina says it once again cannot find any results. The final screenshot shows the last post as it appeared at http://weibo.com/1696059701/yzxvIp8YG before it was dele