Sooner or later everyone flying coach will be required to wear nothing but disposable white jumpsuits and burn all their possessions in a roaring sacrificial bonfire at the security checkpoint, but until that fine day we're still going to have little incidents like the one that transpired 35,000 feet in the air above the midwest yesterday. A flight bound for JFK airport from San Francisco was rerouted to Kansas City for an emergency landing after a camera that resembled a flash drive was found in one of the bathrooms.
Passengers on American Airlines flight 24 were told that the plane was making an emergency landing in order to investigate a bomb scare, and buses were sent out to the plane when it touched down in Kansas City. All 227 people on board were forced to exit the plane and pile into a bus to the terminal, while the Boeing 767 was taken to another part of the runway and thoroughly searched.
The FBI interviewed each passenger, and after it was determined that the device was not a bomb, but one of those secret cameras favored by perverts who spy on people when they use the bathroom, everyone loaded back on the plane. It's unclear if the owner of the camera came forward.
All in all, it sounds like a harrowing and incredibly annoying ordeal. One New Yorker aboard the flight told a local news channel, "To hear the phrase bomb scare, bomb threat, one of my daughters was crying. We calmed her down a bit, but I have to say, I’m pretty stressed out now too. So I’m trying to breathe deeply." The incident happened hours after JFK was shut down because a small plane skidded off the runway and into a snowbank.
