A flight to Chicago was diverted to St. Louis after a man on board said his wife had a bomb in her luggage. The aircraft, United Airlines Flight 380, was flying from Dallas to Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport when the pilot diverted to Lambert due to a maintenance issue at about 8:39 a.m., local time on Sunday, Nov. 16th, landing there.
At some point, a man there — who has since been taken into custody — had said that there was a bomb inside a piece of his wife’s luggage, according to an account by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Law enforcement searched the aircraft prior to its flight being able to continue to Chicago,” United Airlines told Mid Breaker in a statement. At the same time, KSDK reported that investigators were using bomb-sniffing dogs to search the plane.
The Boeing 737-700 had 119 passengers and five crew members on board, and all passengers were made to deplane during the investigation, United said.
“United flight 380 traveling from Dallas to Chicago diverted in St. Louis due to a security concern,” the airline said in its statement. “Law enforcement searched the aircraft. “We took off in St. Louis earlier this afternoon and are now down in Chicago.
The St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department confirmed the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was summoned to the scene and investigating when contacted by Mid Breaker.
The FBI did not immediately respond to Mid Breaker’s request for additional information. United Airlines Flight 380 was delayed five hours and 33 minutes; the travel website FlightAware reported the plane landed in Chicago at 2:50 p.m.
Several such incidents have occurred in recent months on commercial flights. In September, a woman was arrested for apparently making a hoax bomb threat on a Frontier Airlines jetliner that had been bound from Nashville to Denver.
“A passenger notified us that there was a bomb on board the aircraft,” a company spokesman said in a statement to Mid Breaker at the time. “They requested law enforcement support, and the passenger was removed from the aircraft.”
A man was arrested in July after a passenger reported that he had told her during a flight that his laptop was a bomb. Deputies in Pinellas County, Fla., were called to an “alleged bomb threat” that a passenger on Allegiant Flight 1023 had made midflight to Roanoke, Va.: The man “told another passenger that his laptop was a bomb.”
The passenger “immediately made the flight attendants aware,” the Sheriff’s Office said. Then it turned around and landed at St. Pete-Clearwater Airport, but there turned out to be no bomb on board.
