LA-bound United flight makes emergency landing in Chicago following bathroom bomb threat message
CHICAGO — A United Airlines flight headed to Los Angeles made an unplanned landing at O’Hare International Airport Wednesday morning after a passenger wrote in the plane’s restroom that a bomb was on the aircraft, another traveler said.
United Flight 1533 took off from Newark, New Jersey, at 6:30 a.m. Wednesday and landed in Chicago just before 8 a.m. local time, authorities said.
Michael Wilson, 57, was one of the 211 people on board when flight attendants began “yelling” over the plane intercom that passengers needed to take their seats.
“They were announcing the seat belt light was on and everyone must sit down,” Wilson recalled to the Tribune. “You could tell in their voice they were upset. There was never any turbulence to warrant the seat belt announcement.”
When a passenger behind Wilson got a notification that the plane would land in Chicago, he and his companion first thought it was a mistake.
Wilson said once the plane had landed, the pilot announced someone had put a message in the lavatory about a bomb and asked for the message writer to come forward.
He said travelers left the plane in a “remote” part of the O’Hare campus, met a battery of law enforcement and emergency workers and sat on buses for “quite some time” before they were dropped off at a gate.
At the gate, Wilson said an airline representative told passengers the traveler who had left the message had gotten into a confrontation with a flight attendant and asked for the traveler to come forward.
Wilson wasn’t scared throughout the diversion. “(It) just makes for a long day,” he said.
An FBI spokesperson said there was no apparent threat to public safety or the airport.
The plane took off again for Los Angeles at about 2:30 p.m. Wednesday, per flight information.
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