An American Airlines plane was delayed over a WiFi hotspot mentioning a’bomb’.
Flight 2863 was preparing to depart Austin-Bergstrom International Airport in Texas when a man showed a flight attendant something on his tablet, according to passenger Bruce Steen, 63.
The flight attendant informed the cockpit and the pilot announced that the airplane would be going back to the gate because of an ‘administrative issue’, Steen told ABC News.
Minutes later, the pilot said that ‘somebody renamed their hotspot’, Steen said, and the crew revealed it was, ‘There is a bomb on the flight.’
An Austin Police Department lieutenant came on board and declared: ‘If this is a joke, please raise your hand now, because we can deal with the practical joke differently than if this, if we have to do a full blown investigation of what’s going on here.’
After no passengers came forward, police deplaned everybody in groups, said Steen, who was trying to head home to Charlotte, North Carolina.
Passengers had to show their hotspots to authorities and had their baggage sniffed by dogs. Authorities also checked the plane for explosives.
‘All passengers and their checked baggage were rescreened,’ stated the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA).
Transportation agencies ‘taken bomb threats very seriously’, the TSA added.
The plane was cleared to depart for Charlotte around 6.15pm on Friday – more than four hours after it was originally scheduled.
Other flights and airport operations were otherwise not impacted.
It happened nearly a year after United Airlines Flight 1533 which departed Newark International Airport in New Jersey was diverted due to a bomb threat note found in the restroom and a suspicious bag. The plane made an emergency landing at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago. Passengers were allowed back on the same plane five hours later after security checks.
The American Airlines incident came just over a week after a regional jet operated by the carrier collided with a Black Hawk helicopter in what was the worst aviation disaster in the US since 2001.
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