An American Airlines flight was reportedly evacuated and then delayed for nearly five hours in Texas because a passenger had a Wi-Fi hotspot titled, “There is a bomb on the flight”
American Airlines Flight 286 to Charlotte, North Carolina was returned to the gate at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport on Friday after a concerned passenger showed a flight attendant the alarming name, ABC News reported.
The pilot initially blamed the delay on an “administrative issue” but then came out and told passengers it was because “somebody renamed their hotspot” to “there is a bomb on the flight,” passenger Bruce Steen, 63, told the outlet.
He said a lieutenant told passengers: “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.”
When nobody came forward, all the passengers were escorted off the plane and forced to show police the name of their hotspot, the report said.
They were then held in a cordoned-off area and re-screened by security, View from the Wing reported.
Their bags also had to be offloaded from the aircraft amid the checks and were sniffed by bomb dogs, ABC News said.
Once cleared, the flight finally took off at 6:15 p.m., more than four-and-a-half hours late, the outlet reported.
A Transportation Security Administration spokesperson said they and their partners in the transportation sector “take bomb threats very seriously,” in a statement to ABC News.
“All passengers and their checked baggage were rescreened,” the spokesperson said.
There were no significant impacts to airport or airline operations at the Austin airport other than the delayed flight, per the outlet.
