u/anthropaedic

Full context: A recent flight out of Newark was returned back to the airport after flight attendants noticed that someone's wifi name was "Bomb". After repeated instructions to turn off all bluetooth devices, the "Bomb" wifi remained on the active list. The captain decided to return the plane back to the airport where the person owning the device, a 16 year old, was arrested. However, according to the reports, "Bomb" was the default wifi name on a brand of speakers and it could be that the 16 year old never realized that was the name, forgot it was the name, or didn't even know about the wifi in the first place.

Whatever reasons people have to justify this does not outweigh my contention that airlines should just ignore things like this.

I get the cover-your-ass nature of situations similar to this one. If someone shouts "Bomb" in an airport but laughs, its easier and safer to just arrest him than to have officers try to discern whether or not he was joking. And yes, people joking about it is stupid and annoying, but I don't think it should rise to the level of arrest and criminal record. And personally I think cover-your-ass policies are lazy and give corporations an excuse to not train people, not hire professionals, or simply deflect blame.

I think the cost in time and money is too valuable to have planes in the air be turned around for something like this. If they wanted to arrest him, let the entire airplane full of people get to their destination first and then arrest the person at that location. Don't fuck up everyone else's itineraries by turning the plane around, having federal agents sweep the plane for bombs, and then have to replane them or alter people's flights.

And yeah, of course if there was an actual bomb, it would be bad, but I believe in taking some chances in life. This stuff is rare and none of us believe that stupid policies like this are actually reducing attacks or stopping actual terrorists anyway. You could google years of incidents where the TSA missed weapons, or someone accidentally brought something onboard that's banned, or inconsistent enforcement lead to some people having to throw away a bottle of perfume because its over 3oz but someone else got to keep their giant thermos full of liquid. 99% would agree that the TSA is merely security theater, but I'd wager a lot of that 99% would be loathed to allow the kind of bomb and hijacking jokes I'm advocating here because you don't want to seem like you're pro-terrorism.

Humans naturally default to remembering and worrying about the worst case scenarios. That may be our nature but it doesn't have to affect our actions when we recognize it. We would be equally as safe if airlines or the feds or whoever is making these rules eliminate them and allow bomb jokes, hijacking comments, or terrorism talk in airports and on airplanes. Actual security should focus on things that are actually dangerous. A joke wifi name, as annoying as it is, is not inherently dangerous. Nor is someone getting frustrated at staff and saying they wish the plane would blow up. These things should be treated as the jokes or unserious expressions of frustration as they are instead of federal crimes.