An American Airlines flight from Newark, New Jersey, to Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, had to be diverted after a flight attendant found a note with a bomb threat on the plane.
The note, written in pink ink, was stuck to the bathroom door and was hardly readable, but the flight attendant could read, “there’s a bomb onboard.” She immediately informed the pilot about the note, who diverted the plane to Pittsburgh International Airport, where the FBI interrogated the last two passengers who had used the bathroom.
K-9 units also searched the plane for the pink pen but did not find anything. The FBI stated it remains unclear when the note was written. The plane was later cleared to fly again and landed in Dallas around 4:30 p.m. Law enforcement has not arrested anyone as of now.
A similar note was discovered earlier this year in the bathroom of a United Airlines flight, leading to its emergency landing in Chicago. That flight also took off from Newark and carried over 200 passengers to Los Angeles.
In April, another United Airlines flight from Chicago to Washington was forced to return to Chicago shortly after take-off when a bomb threat written on the bathroom’s mirror was discovered.
Many flights have been disrupted by bomb threats and other security risks in recent times.
In February, multiple passengers and airline crew had to physically restrain a passenger who was trying to open the emergency door of the American Airlines flight mid-air.
Furthermore, maggots fell on a woman’s head from an overhead suitcase during a Delta Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit in February, forcing the plane to return to Amsterdam. The maggots came from rotten fish wrapped in newspaper inside one of the overhead bags.
According to US federal law, a person raising a bomb hoax can be imprisoned for five years, slapped with a $5,000 fine, or both.
Historically, flights have been prone to terror attacks, including bombings. Most of the airline bombings happened before the 9/11 twin tower attacks, which forced US lawmakers to introduce many revolutionary laws to increase airline security.
However, even after 9/11, airlines have been subjected to multiple bombings and failed bombing attempts. In December 2001, Al-Qaeda terrorist Richard Reid failed to detonate a plastic bomb hidden in his shoes during a flight from Paris to Miami.
Similarly, a Chinese domestic flight crashed in 2002 when a passenger named Zhang Pilin ignited fire in the plane using gasoline, leading to the death of 112 people on board. In 2009, an Al-Qaeda operative, Umar Farouk Abdul mutallab, unsuccessfully tried to explode a plastic bomb he was concealing in his underwear.
