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bfogler

Member since: Jan 12th, 2010

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Airline Hoaxes No Joke: From Bomb Threats to Malicious Tweets (AOL Travel News)

Mar 23rd 2011 5:06PM I had a flight I was on interrupted by a bomb threat. The flight was a Swissair flight from Newark to Tel Aviv, with a stop in Geneva, Switzerland. In Geneva, a woman was wandering around the gate area before the flight, seemingly very agitated. She kept going up to different people and talking to them, including me. I did not recognize what language she was speaking at all.

When it came time to board, she calmed down enough to get on the plane, but once on, started approaching people again, and wouldn't take her seat. I took my seat, and could see her going up and down the aisles, trying to talk to people. Finally one of the flight crew spoke to her, and took her to the front of the plane. Shortly after that, they came on the intercom and annouced that we were all goign to have to de-plane, and take our carryon luggage with us. The reason? The woman started making bomb threats against the plane - that she was trying to escape from her husband, and that he might have put a bomb in her luggage to prevent that. They didn't think it ws really true, but couldn't take the risk that it might be...

Once we were off the plane, they took it away from the gate, and eventually replaced it with a different plane. All the checked luggage was removed from the original plane and re-checked before being loaded on the new plane. They brought a portable chemical sniffer unit into the gate area, and when we were allowed to re-board, all carryon luggage was both xrayed and "sniffed" for explosives.

Total delay - 6+ hoours. Was I upset by the delay? Not in the least, given the circumstances...

Doesn't happen?? It most certainly does....

BBC Reporter Smashes 'Unbreakable' Cell Phone During CES 2010 (Switched)

Jan 12th 2010 9:04AM they claimed it could stand up to being used to hammer nails, so I could see someone doing exactly what the reporter did...

BBC Reporter Smashes 'Unbreakable' Cell Phone During CES 2010 (Switched)

Jan 12th 2010 9:01AM I once worked for a company where we sold a software application that allowed users to communicate with a supposedly ruggedized mobile device. We announced the product at a trade show, and I was there to conduct demonstrations. I was in the middle of doing one when the President of the company borrowed one of the mobile devices to show to someone else. The show was in a large hall with cement floors, over which carpeting had been laid in our booth.
To demonstrate how rugged the device supposedly was, the President then dropped the device on the floor in the middle of talking to the prospective customers - and you can guess what happened. As with the phone in this clip, the screen broke. He frantically waves the terminal at me while I'm still finishing up the demo I was doing, and all I could do was shrug my shoulders - I was just glad it didn't happen to me!!
The vendor of the mobile device was also at the show, and when I finished my demo, I took the broken unit and walked over to their booth, ,and quietly showed them the unit and told them what happened. They quickly replaced the unit, but did ask that we not conduct any more drop tests during the show!!
Ever since that incident, I've been highly skeptical of claims that any such device is "unbreakable"!!!