An American Airlines flight was delayed by more than four hours when a passenger arrived at Austin Airport with their Wi-Fi hotspot saved as ‘I have a bomb’.
Police boarded flight 2863, bound for Charlotte, on Friday afternoon and asked the passenger to identify themselves, assessing it could be a ‘prank’.
‘Cue the groaning from the entire f***ing plane when the cop announced this,’ one passenger recalled, with choice words for the ‘idiot’ who refused to come forward.
All passengers were eventually hauled off the aircraft and held inside the gate, before being re-screened at security, View from the Wing reports.
Baggage on board the aircraft was taken off the plane and set out on the tarmac for inspection as the passengers waited in a cordoned-off segment.
‘Eventually we are able to board again and take off but the whole thing was just so f***ing infuriating because after all that they were not even able to determine who the hell did this s***,’ a passenger shared.
The aircraft was eventually cleared after it was swept for explosives, and the plane finally departed at 6:15pm local time, according to airport officials.
Reddit user velvet-violets shared an image of bags on the tarmac during the incident
American Airlines Flight 2863 was supposed to leave Austin, Texas at 1:42pm on Friday, arriving in Charlotte, North Carolina, arriving at 5:23pm.
It was only when on board that passengers realized something was off.
One passenger wrote on Reddit that ‘everything was normal for the most part’.
‘We boarded and once we were settled I took a little nap. I woke like two hours later and was confused why we were still on the tarmac…’
Another passenger, who gave his name as Steen, told ABC News that he was travelling home when the incident happened.
A passenger walked up to a flight attendant with a tablet to ‘show her something’, the outlet reports, before she called the cockpit.
The pilot then announced that the flight would be returning to the gate due to an ‘administrative issue’.
The pilot later announced that ‘somebody renamed their hotspot “there is a bomb on the flight”‘.
The gate was blocked off, with passengers held for hours over the security incident
A police official boarded the plane and told passengers the prank was not funny.
‘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,’ Sheen recalled the lieutenant as having said.
When nobody owned up, all passengers were asked to make their way off the plane.
Several K9 units were brought in to sniff around the baggage compartment of the plane, as well as the luggage hauled out onto the tarmac.
The aircraft was eventually cleared after it was swept for explosives, and the plane finally departed at 6:15pm local time, according to airport officials.
A spokesperson for Austin-Bergstrom International Airport told DailyMail.com that ‘Austin Police Department (APD) and the Department of Aviation were alerted by airline crew to suspicious activity on a departing aircraft regarding the name of a WiFi hotspot involving the word “bomb”.’
‘The aircraft returned to the gate to allow APD to sweep the aircraft and luggage for explosives. All passengers were deplaned and re-screened by the Transportation Security Administration prior to being allowed to board again,’ they confirmed.
‘The aircraft was cleared by APD around 4:40 p.m., and all passengers were successfully re-screened around 5 p.m. The flight departed around 6:15 p.m.
‘The incident did not cause significant impacts to airport operations other than the response and it did not affect airline operations other than the flight that was held back. The flight was an American Airlines flight.’
DailyMail.com contacted American Airlines for comment.
A similar incident in 2014 caused a 17 hour delay, when a passenger boarded an American Airlines flight with a hotspot saved as ‘Al-Quida Free Terror Nettwork’.
The flight, from LAX to London, also turned back to the gate after a flight attendant on board was shown the list of hotspots while taxiing on the runway.
File photo. A similar incident happened on board an American Airlines flight in 2014
Passengers were forced off the plane, with some having to stay in hotels overnight during the long wait.
Kevin Simon, who lives in Orange County but is from the UK, told MailOnline that the plane was stationary for one-and-a-half hours before they returned to the gate.
Passengers were told that there was a ‘minor security issue’ that had to be dealt with, but the pilot and crew never fully explained what was going on.
He added: ‘Never once did the pilot mention what the exact problem was. I only found out about the WiFi hotspot name after I got back home and googled for any clues.
‘There were a few airport police on the jetway by the door as we deplaned. When I went past them, they didn’t appear to have arrested anyone.’
When contacted by MailOnline, a spokesman for American Airlines confirmed that the plane returned to the gate after a passenger expressed ‘security concerns’ and that the flight had been rescheduled.
