Italian dude's text message causes hijacking scare
posted December 22nd 2004 2:02AM
A lot of you are going to be flying this holiday season, so just a friendly reminder that it's probably not a good idea to send a hoax text message to someone from the plane telling them that you've just been hijacked. We know it's mighty tempting and that sounds like it'd really be a hoot, but Antonio Casale found out the hard way what happens—he was arrested by police in Vienna after he sent a message to his wife during a stopover saying that terrorists had taken over the plane. She called the local police in a panic, and they then alerted the Federal Police in Australia (where the flight orginated), who had a pretty tense ten or 12 minutes before they figured out that everything was ok (their first clue was that the pilot was completely unaware of any hijacking).
I think its ridiculous that he was arrested. I mean, sure if he had said that to the actual airline arrest him, but to his wife? Leave the guy alone!
Good for him what an idiot... that is what you get for crying wolf. If the plane really was hijacked and he text messaged to get the word out and got actually responses that is good.. What a jackass.
sure, he should be arrested. this is a serious deal.
the plane intended to fly to australia and landed in vienna austria ? ;)
Also noted at
http://richi.co.uk/blog/2004/12/stupidest-text-message-ever.html with link to the IHT version of the story. What a maroon.
He'll be the b*tch of his cellmates in the jail.
Kind of a self-fulfilling action. By sending that message he terrorized the authorities and everyone on the plane.
...and just because the pilot was unaware, doesn't mean a hijacking wasn't going down. All that could mean is they hadn't made their move on the cockpit yet.
I'm actually quite surprised no charges were laid.
Dude, I don't care how funny a joke would be I'm not using the phone shown in that picture (The Nokia 8390) to send the hoax text message. That's the smallest cellphone I've ever used. While it was a critical part of my tech cred at one point in my life to have the smallest phone (over compensating for some other large equipment I had maybe?) I've moved on to the Nokia 6800 series phones so I can actually send messages on them.
Okay, I admit it, when I had the 8390 at the same time I was lugging around a Toshiba Satellite 335 CDT. A laptop so old I bought it about the time I got my Nokia 6160 and it was the smallest phone you could get and everyone else had 2160s.
Now that I have a TiBook I can happily use a Nokia 6820 and be happy even though someone else might have smaller equipment than I do.
This real life story reminds me of that Dilbert cartoon where he gets on a plane and says "Hi Jack" to someone he knows. You can guess the rest...
Austria? Well G'DAY MATE! LETS PUT ANOTHER SHRIMP ON THE BARBIE!!!
Actually, he was only questioned, not arrested when he reached Vienna. He was departing from Australia, heading to Austria: no reroute has taken place.