Specific info on BA flights - U.S.
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British Airways aircraft on the tarmac at London's Heathrow Airport.
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CNN's Kelli Arena reports on possible attacks by al Qaeda and related groups.
British plan for marshals on some flights to U.S.meets resistance.
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(CNN) -- The delays and cancellations of several British Airways flights in the last week were justified by specific threats, according to the U.S. official in charge of security.
His comments on Monday came as UK Transport Secretary Alistair Darling said air travelers would have to get used to a "heightened state of alert" that could last for many years.
British Airways canceled a flight from Heathrow to Washington's Dulles airport on Thursday and Friday on government advice. Flight 223 was allowed to take off Saturday and Sunday but was delayed for more than three hours both days by thorough security screening.
U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge told NBC's Today program "there was specific information regarding those flights."
"We think you err on the side of public safety when you have a threat targeting a specific flight," he told ABC's Good Morning America without further elaboration.
Ridge also said President George W. Bush, in considering the threat, "had posited the very human question ... 'would you want a member of your family flying?' And the answer was no."
In Britain, Transport Secretary Darling said the vast majority of flights were going ahead as normal, despite the cancellations last week.
"The decision to cancel the flight is something that is only taken in exceptional circumstances," he told the BBC.
He said such a decision was only taken "when we have information that leads us to the conclusion that that is the only thing that is safe to do."
Specific intelligence was apparently at the root of the cancellations and delays, prompting a flood of speculation, leaks and off- and on-the-record comments about the nature of that intelligence.
One U.S. official told CNN Sunday that officials had "good and sufficient reasons to do what they did," but added that he saw "no value in being more precise than that."
"None of the decisions were made on the basis of names on passenger lists," the official said. "The information was on flights and routes; then we looked at the manifests."
Darling said a similar cancellation Saturday of a BA flight from London to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, was equally justified, but he would not comment on reports the UK government had received intelligence that al Qaeda was planning to use the flights to launch suicide attacks on prominent U.S. targets.
A Bush administration official, however, blamed Friday's cancellation of the London-to-Washington flight on BA pilots who refused to fly with an armed marshal aboard.
But the British Airlines Pilots Association said that, while both Thursday's and Friday's flights were canceled because of the dispute over armed marshals, BA pilots had agreed some time ago to cancel flights in the event of a credible threat rather than fly with a marshal aboard.
-- CNN's Melissa Gray, Kelli Arena and Sheila MacVicar contributed to this report.
