LAX To London Flight Delayed Over "Al-Quida" Wi-Fi Name

linuxwrangler writes A flight from LAX to London was delayed after a passenger reported seeing "Al-Quida Free Terror Nettwork" as an available hotspot name and reported it to a flight attendant. The flight was taken to a remote part of the airport and delayed for several hours but "after further investigation, it was determined that no crime was committed and no further action will be taken." That seems an awfully low threshold for disrupting air traffic, since wireless access points can be had for just a few dollars these days.

Comments

Re:This was no AP.

[Anonymous Coward]

Incredible that they managed to spell "Al-Quida" correctly but misspelled "nettwork".

It's also redundant. Al-Quida means "The Network", I've seen several cases were people jokingly set their network name to Al-Quida because of this.

America's auto-immune disease: Terrorism.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

When the body mistakenly believes a substance to be a pathogen, it kicks its immune system in high gear and starts attacking it like Don Quixote charging the windmills. That over reaction harms the body more than what the substance could have caused.

America's overreaction to ISIS, al-queda etc fall into this category. We are doing a lot more damage by such over reactions than what these entities could do to us. We need a strong dose of anti-histamines. (Of course there will be people protesting the discrimination against the histamines)

Re:This was no AP.

[Jason Levine]

My father likes to tell the story of his and my mother's honeymoon. The whole thing was a disaster (my mother ended up with an injured neck during a hike). When their return flight was rerouted to another city entirely, my father had enough and loudly complained to a flight attendant about his wife's injured neck. The plane landed but didn't go to the hanger. Instead, the plane was surrounded and people boarded the plane, came to him, and asked if they were the ones who needed medical attention. As they left the plane, my father whispered to my mother "I guess they found the bomb."

Turns out a passenger heard this and reported it. When my parents went to collect their checked baggage, they found it on one side in chains. After the "bomb threat" and luggage turning up that nobody claimed (my parents having gone right to the hospital), the police suspected their suitcase of containing a bomb. After examining it, they let him go with his luggage. Nowadays, he'd probably be arrested for making a terrorist threat or would have his luggage blown up as a "preventative measure."