For some, it feels like just yesterday that getting on a flight made you feel like Don Draper, hurtling through the sky in style. Laptops were being used, free meals with two olives were being handed out, and you wouldn’t have the crap beaten out of you for refusing to get off the overbooked plane. There was also far less patting down.
Now, the perception of flying for some stressed travelers is a mix between Lord of the Flies and Speed. While this air-travel fatalism is certainly a product of the mass media consumed around the world, some things aren’t worth playing with. Just days after the Ariana Grande terrorist attack in Manchester, the passengers and crew of a U.K. flight scheduled to depart from Cancun, Mexico noticed a WiFi hotspot called “Jihadist Cell London 1.” This spread quickly throughout the plane, leading to disturbed and crying passengers. A probe was immediately started, with sniffing dogs and police examining the aircraft and electronic devices of the passengers.
The Sun has the Captain’s briefing of the situation to the passengers which is polite but concerned. He starts off by explaining why they flight is being delayed to applause from the passengers, then gets specific about the WiFi name, urging whoever did it to talk to the crew so the police don’t have to get involved and search through every electronic device aboard the flight. You can listen to it all here, with a brief transcript below:
…On their phones, which had an extremely subversive title to it: Jihadist Cell London 1. The first thing I’m going to say is that if someone has that on their phone as a lark, it would be very advantageous to yourself to come forward. Talk to one of the cabin crew and we can save ourselves some time. It’s something on board this airplane.
The pilot goes on to say that the airline’s security reported to the pilot that they had an IP address, but that likely doesn’t mean much. Whoever had that hotspot set up deleted it from their device before anyone could find the culprit, so the decision was made to take everyone off the flight, put them in a hotel, and try again the next day.
Thankfully, everything was safe, but it’s a shame that fear has gripped the world like this. Anyone who names their WiFi that is just dense, even if it’s a bad (terrible) joke.
(Via Bro Bible)