Passenger Takes Things To The Extreme After Missing Her Flight

on

**Update: 27/01/20 @ 11:30 UTC – More information included on American Airlines’ policy of offloading baggage. See below.**

On Friday, January 24th, Katie Hinsen was headed to the Sundance Film Festival, traveling on American Airlines flight 648 from Phoenix to Salt Lake City. Unfortunately, Katie’s flight would be delayed because a woman missed the final call, making it to the gate seconds too late. With checked baggage on board, she was told to take the next flight and meet her bags at the destination. Her reaction? Tell the gate agents that she had a bomb in her bag…

American flight 648 was operated with an Airbus A320. Photo: Colin Brown via Wikipedia

“There’s a bomb in my bag”

Katie took to Twitter to share the details of the outrageous incident with the internet, to which it seems she had a front-row seat. Rather than share the tweet, we’ve censored some of the profanity:

My travel to @sundancefest has been delayed because of a privileged white lady who pulled some [profanity redacted].

Plane was closed and about to leave when woman approached the gate. She’d been chilling in the lounge and missed her flight. Was told she would be on the next one her bag would meet her in SLC. She was NOT HAVING IT.

She’s apparently an elite member and frequent flier. She demanded her bag be taken off the plane or she be let on. She was told “no”.

Someone wasn’t used to being told no.

She threatened the gate staff. They wouldn’t budge. @AmericanAir staff were great- they were not taking #whitelady bull[profanity redacted].

She had one move left. She knew it would work. She mustered all her drama and said the words “there’s a bomb in my bag.”

So her bag was indeed taken off the plane. She was perp-walked across the tarmac to the cop car. The plane was cleared. Bomb squad had to sweep. TSA, bomb squad, cops had to do the whole safety routine.

[profanity redacted] privilege.

[End of tweets]

Katie makes subsequent posts noting that authorities evacuated the whole arm of the terminal with bars and restaurants also getting shut down.

The woman who made the threat has been identified as 53-year-old Hope Webber of Scottsdale, Arizona – a visual communications and branding entrepreneur according to her LinkedIn profile.  For those who want to read the entire series of tweets, you can click here.

The consequences

ABC15 reports that Phoenix police were called to Sky Harbor International Airport to deal with the passenger while the Phoenix Bomb Squad had to sweep the aircraft and make sure the threat had no substance to it. Sources go on to say that Webber was arrested and booked at a jail in central Phoenix for “false emergency reporting, a class one misdemeanor, and for making a false terrorism report, a class three felony”.

We reached out to American Airlines and here is what they had to say on the matter:

“American Airlines requested law enforcement meet flight 648 prior to departure at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport due to a disruptive passenger. The flight re-departed at 6:30 p.m. local time.”

Phoenix Sky Harbor airport also responded to our request for comment saying that three flights were delayed and confirmed that a portion of a concourse was cleared briefly while Police investigated a possible threat. After 30-45 minutes of closure, operations returned to normal at Sky Harbor.

A follow-up inquiry to American Airlines regarding offloading baggage gave us this response from the airline:

“For domestic flights in the United States, if a passenger misses their flight, the bag will continue to their final destination. There is no TSA requirement that the passenger must be on the flight. For international flights, the bag will be offloaded.”

US airport security
It’s common knowledge that bomb threats are taken extremely seriously – even sarcastic jokes may cause alarm. Photo: Getty Images

Conclusion

ABC15 had a chance to speak with a tenant living in a property managed by Webber. This tenant describes Webber as “kindhearted and sweet”, adding, “I just don’t know what could have happened … I don’t ever see her as being a malicious, mean person.”

The stress of missing an important flight can cause people to act irrationally. Whether it was the thought of being separated from some extremely important baggage or having to miss an important event, the woman was likely not thinking straight.

Ultimately though, with the knowledge that we’re given, it is difficult to have much sympathy for Webber, who not only delayed the journey of more than a hundred passengers (American Airlines has enough trouble with its flights) but also wasted valuable police resources with her ‘threat’.

Do you that, given the circumstances, the gate agents and airline staff should have brushed off her ‘bomb in my bag’ comment? Or should every mention of a bomb have the same response, regardless of context? Let us know in the comments!

The post Passenger Takes Things To The Extreme After Missing Her Flight appeared first on Simple Flying.