SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - It's the terror of every airport in the post 9/11 world - a suitcase left unattended while numerous announcements over the public address system failed to yield an owner.

Police were called to the scene, the airport was evacuated for two hours starting around 6 p.m. and one flight was delayed when the green bag was left outside the departure terminal on Tuesday night.

"When a bag is left behind we treat it very seriously and we do a risk assessment and make a decision at that point on what to do," said airport manager Steve Loutitt.

"We make announcements. We try to identify who the bag owner is by using either baggage tags or an identification tag," he said, adding they check the name with the airlines to see if that person was flying with them, or at least if the bag has flown and where it has come from.

"That's part of our risk assessment. If the bag arrived here from Edmonton then we know it's been screened at the Edmonton airport and we know that the bag itself has flown and we know there's less of a risk."

Lower-risk situations don't require the police to be brought on scene, but the bag is still swabbed for explosive residue and scanned through an x-ray.

The tags on the green suitcase in question had been ripped off and no one knew if it had even flown.

Loutitt said that most of the time in these situations, though, the bags are just left behind by passengers by accident.

"They'll just leave their bag to go do something or forget it there."

Four police arrived on the scene, then the bag was checked for explosives. The bag turned out to be forgotten luggage and the airport managed to identify the owner.

People were let back in at about 8 p.m. and only one flight, a Canadian North flight departing to Hay River, was delayed.

"It happened at a time when we had no flights coming in and only one leaving the terminal, so we were fairly fortunate with the timing."

The owner was eventually contacted.

"We understand it wasn't intentional and the owner is quite apologetic," said Loutitt.