HIGH ANXIETY: An American plane is searched Monday at JFK after a terror hoax resulted in a tense exchange between the pilot and controllers. (
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An American Airlines pilot whose jet was ordered to undergo a emergency search at Kennedy Airport was so furious at being kept in the dark over why that he threatened to evacuate passengers right on the tarmac.
“OK, we’re surrounded by emergency vehicles. There’s a reason for this. Somebody’s got to give us the reason, or we’re going to evacuate the aircraft. You got 60 seconds,’’ seethed the pilot in a tense exchange with air-traffic controllers after landing at 3:30 p.m. Monday.
The plane was one of two incoming jets that had been forced into the airport’s so-called “hijack site’’ after a sick hoaxer called authorities to report that gas-masked, explosives-laden terrorists were hiding in the crafts’ wheel wells.
“OK. I’m the captain of this airliner, and I need information pronto,” the American Airlines pilot growled to the tower after being ordered to the secluded section of the runaway as emergency vehicles began flocking to it.
An air-traffic controller asked, “Can you contact your company? Do they have any information for you?” according to audio recordings detailed on abcnews.com.
“Negative, they’re not answering. What do you have?” the pilot demanded.
“I don’t have a thing at this moment, except that you and the aircraft beside you need to wait in that area,” the controller said.
After the pilot then threatened to evacuate the craft, the controller finally came back on and said, “We have the information. Can you possibly call?”
But the angry pilot stubbornly replied, “Negative. I would demand the information right now over a frequency.”
He was then informed of the threat.
Both his jet and a Finnair plane were delayed for more than 45 minutes while authorities conducted searches of the aircraft and deemed the call a hoax.
At one point during the search, “The pilot came on [the plane’s public-address system], and he told us basically that he had no information, but that we were being held due to a possible phone-in threat,” American Airlines passenger Brian Teitelbaum told ABC.
Another flier, Tim Skelly, said the captain admitted to them, “I’m not sure if this is bogus or not, but there’s going to be some law-enforcement people coming on the plane.”
Aviation expert John Lance told ABC it appeared the pilot was completely within his right to demand more information from the towerat the time.
“Unless they had a legitimate reason to believe the crew had been compromised … I don’t see a justification at this point for not telling the pilot” what was going on sooner, Nance told ABC.