Passengers Leap Out of 737 Through Emergency Exits When Man Says He Has a Bomb

A passenger joked about a bomb and everyone started leaping out of the plane through the emergency exits on Monday. And 10 passengers were injured, some hurt “after falling through the plane’s engine.”

It was Lion Air flight JT687, a Boeing 737 headed for Jakarta, about to take off from West Kalimantan in the Indonesian part of Borneo which is 411 miles Southwest of Kota Kinabalu in Malaysia. Someone overheard a 26 year old telling a flight attendant that a bomb was on the plane. It’s the second time in a week that Lion Air has had a passenger make a bomb joke onboard.

I have to think that the injuries were caused falling from the engine, as in hitting the ground, rather than through the engine as the story is being reported by The Jakarta Post.

Here’s video of the spontaneous evacuation with passengers jumping off the aircraft. Flight crew did not instruct passengers to leave the aircraft.

Apparently the man made the joke because “he was annoyed when one of the [flight] attendants moved his bag.” Another report though claims he said the bag had a laptop, not a bomb and he was misunderstood. Eight passengers were hospitalized in the incident, suffering from broken bones and from head injuries. The bomb joke could land the man in jail for eight years.

The flight re-boarded, left three hours late, and made it to Jakarta.

I’m beginning to think that airlines should require passengers to certify that they’ve seen the movie Airplane! before being allowed to board one.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. “I’m beginning to think that airlines should require passengers to certify that they’ve seen the movie Airplane! before being allowed to board one.”

    Then nobody would order the fish.

  2. Idiots. Did they think standing on a wing full of fuel if a bomb did go off was a safer place to be?

  3. Which idiot after leaving a plane where s/he seriously believed there was a bomb and the stopped to film it!! FFS!
    Some idiot did this in Glasgow couple years back after emergency evacuation!!! Same passenger who whined, “the crew shouted at us when to get us to leave the aircraft “!!! That’s their jobs tosser!!!
    Really !?!? The stupidity of average Joe / Joanna never ceases to amaze me!!

  4. Every time you post that clip from airplane, it makes me smile a bit more than the last time

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