A Southwest Airlines flight from Las Vegas to Maui diverted to Oakland on Monday when a passenger Airdropped a bomb threat. The plane was evacuated, passengers and luggage were searched, and no explosives were found. After five hours and forty minutes on the ground the flight was permitted to continue to Hawaii, where it arrived about eight hours late.
The pilot lied to passengers during this diversion, reporting a mechanical issue – presumably so as not to tip off an actual terrorist. However, crew knew and a passenger reports hearing a flight attendant break down, “Get me the f— off this plane.”
Once on the ground, law enforcement surrounded the aircraft, boarded the plane, then ordered everyone off. Passengers were allowed to take medications, cell phones, and ID with them while deplaning in Oakland, while having to leave everything else on board. They were placed on buses and screened through security. No arrests were made.
@miss.valerie808 Wtf??? Who would do something like this #flight3316 ♬ original sound – Bthechange
Last fall an American Airlines flight from Dallas – Fort Worth to Albuquerque made an emergency landing at its destination when a passenger airdropped a bomb threat against the flight. Recently-released police body cam footage shows officers huddling about tactics prior to boarding the aircraft.
Then they’re shown entering the plane, guns drawn, and ordering passengers to place their hands on their heads – before taking the suspect off of the aircraft. Once the suspect was removed, passengers were forced to deplane without their belongings and wait for the aircraft to be swept – even though they were at their destination.
While airdrops – from threats to porn – have happened on several flights, it even happened just a few days ago on a flight in the Philippines.
A Cebu Pacific passenger of flight 5J472 bound for Manila from Bacolod-Silay Airport received a bomb threat via airdrop while inside the aircraft at 11:39PM on July 2.
📸 @mco_caap pic.twitter.com/31qz39rz8X
— Jacque Manabat (@jacquemanabat) July 3, 2023
There are no known instances of an airdrop mention of a bomb involving an actual bomb.
Passengers were exposed airdropping porn on Southwest last year and on another flight a Southwest pilot had to warn passengers to stop airdropping porn or else they’d turn the plane around. Meanwhile a United flight was deplaned after a passenger airdropped a photo of a toy gun.
America continues its slide into 3rd world and does nothing about it. So pathetic.
I’m an Android user with zero knowledge of iPhones. Can’t these airdrops be traced back to origin? If so, do the senders realize what they are doing, and that they can be charged with a felony?
I once had to call the police on a passenger because in the gate area his 13-or-so-year-old daughter received an airdropped pic of a penis. The father went up to several men who matched the, shall we say, skin tone of said photo’d member and attempted to pull their pants down. It wasn’t well received. I felt like Oprah that day… You get to go to jail! And you get to go to jail! And you get to go to jail!
Imagine if an extremist group–right wing whack jobs as easily as any other bunch–decided to do this with burner phones 500 or 1000 times a day. The system would collapse.
This kind of junk has been going on mass public transport systems on the ground for a long time. London has had this kind of thing happening for well over a decade.
Interestingly, this only impacts users that have changed their default AirDrop settings to explicitly allow AirDrop from anyone: https://support.apple.com/guide/security/airdrop-security-sec2261183f4/web
I have to imagine that’s a minority of users, and one could investigate by checking the name of phones on the passenger’s plane, but there’s not a whole lot else that can be done. That’s pretty garbage on Apple’s part considering the protocol has been around since 2011. 12 years and no improvements is a shame upon Apple.
Gives one more reason to “turn off all your electronic devices.”
In fact, I would block all communication between electronic devices if I was the airline (if that can be done).
I hope the next report is on how many years in federal prison the perps are getting for such threats.
Wow that video of the arrest is legit.
>Ray says:
>July 6, 2023 at 12:29 pm
>America continues its slide into 3rd world and does nothing about it. So pathetic.
Actually these sort of passenger incidents don’t really happen in ‘third world’ countries with the alarming regularity that they do in the ‘first world.’ People in the so-called
‘third-world’ are much more disciplined than they are given credit for. Covid was the perfect example where mask usage and distancing and maintaining lockdowns was much much better in the ‘third world’ than in the supposedly more educated US of A where nobody cared about common sense and public health, but were more into protesting like overgrown uneducated babies (my own vaccine-administering nurse was unmasked while being literally centimetres from my face.) So rather than make comparisons from some high horse, maybe think about what the real problem is? Sure every country has a passenger incident once in a while, but the regularity with which these kind of incidents happen in the US of A is overlooked. Whereas the minute something like this happens in a poorer country, all the ignoramuses of the first world are quick to jump on the “oh this shitty country’ bandwagon. I’d say sit down and take a hard look at the situation at home first, and quit making comparisons. You are not ‘descending’ to the third world because that world may be much higher than you in many aspects. You are carving out your own bottom.
Aside from the dirtbags getting their due justice, I hope Apple is found negligent in this as well, and forced to make changes to their technology, as well as a hefty fine. Their products are costing taxpayers millions.
Why it was happing again and again? may they want change rule for all.
Bomb threats are never real. Never. The way we overreact spurs more hoaxes.
Why anyone would want to have their phone set to allow Airdrop from a stranger is beyond me. And parents who do not disable Airdrop on their children’s phones are not supervising their children’s online presence well.
My own phone is set to “Contacts Only” for Airdrop. This is sufficient for me. See, https://www.howtogeek.com/301313/how-to-turn-off-airdrop-in-ios-so-you-dont-get-unsolicited-photos/.
If you don’t know what your (and your children’s) phone settings are – both for Airdrop and for many other “features” of your phone that allow others to see or learn the information on your phone – please learn. Example: If you use public wifi without a VPN – please get one. Otherwise, you are contributing to the scammers and the mentally ill who profit (either financially or emotionally, or both) from your lack of knowledge.