A Flight Diverted Due to a Suspicious Passenger
A Southwest Airlines flight from Nashville to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, was diverted to Atlanta due to a passenger acting suspiciously during the flight. According to audio from Air Traffic Control (ATC), the situation prompted immediate action from the airline and local authorities.
Southwest Airlines referred to the incident as a “security matter” and confirmed that Flight 2094 landed safely at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport on Friday evening after being redirected. Atlanta police removed one customer from the aircraft for further investigation.
The call between the flight and ATC in Atlanta revealed the crew’s concerns about one of the passengers. The following exchange took place:
ATC:“Just to be clear, is it a suspicious item or a suspicious passenger?”
SW 2094:“Suspicious passenger.”
ATC:“Copy.”
SW 2094:“Hey, this is the captain speaking to you. We’ve got one passenger that was, just, being very suspicious… had a timer going off every 10 minutes. Uh, foreign languages, worried about his bag. So, everybody got uncomfortable. We’ve got a 25-year flight attendant back there who’s uncomfortable with it, so.”
After identifying the passenger’s specific seat on the plane, a sergeant with the Atlanta Police Department joined the call to inform the captain that there was a plan in place to deboard the aircraft and investigate the matter.
Passengers Reaccommodated and Continued Their Journey
Passengers on Flight 2094 were reaccommodated on another aircraft and continued to Fort Lauderdale, arriving just before 3:30 a.m. According to the FBI Atlanta, an investigation determined there was no credible threat, and no charges were filed against the person detained.
A Brentwood family that was on the flight shared their experience with WSMV. They noticed something was wrong early in the flight when they observed the flight attendants running up and down the aisles.
“They were running down the aisle and I thought to myself, I was like, they really shouldn’t run, it makes me feel like something’s going on,” said passenger Julie Porter.
Their daughter, Sarah, added, “They didn’t really tell us anything at all except that we were gonna be having an emergency landing at the nearest airport, which they didn’t even tell us where that was gonna be. We had to find out ourselves, but there was just a lot of running.”
The Porters said the male passenger who was later removed from the plane was sitting a few rows ahead of them and seemed upset because his bag was too large to fit under the seat in front of him. They didn’t directly hear any outbursts or threats from him, but another passenger later told them the person sitting behind him may have seen concerning text messages on his phone and alerted flight attendants.
“The person sitting next to him kept getting up out of his seat and coming back to talk to the flight attendants,” Sarah said. “So like retrospectively, there was definitely stuff happening between the row that he was in and the row behind him.”
A Tense Arrival in Atlanta
When the plane landed in Atlanta, the passengers sat on the plane for over an hour with no information. Then, the flight attendants began yelling, “Heads down, hands up. Heads down, hands up.”
Julie said, “It was like five minutes, I would say at least, of just the flight attendants yelling that.” She added, “When I see guns drawn, I’m like, oh my gosh, is someone going to get shot? Like, I was like, if someone doesn’t have their head down, like what happens to them?”
After that, they still sat on the plane for another hour. “We had to get off the plane one by one,” Sarah said. “We had to like leave our bags in rows and have a canine come sniff it. It was like a whole like four hour thing just on the runway.”
Eventually, they were transferred to a gate where they were able to get on another plane and continue to their destination around 3:30 a.m.
Apology and Compensation
Julie said she received an email from Southwest Airlines apologizing for the incident and was given a $200 voucher per person for the trouble.
“We have reached out to all of the Customers to apologize for the situation,” Southwest Airlines said in a statement. “We appreciate the professionalism of our flight crew and sincerely apologize to our customers for the significant delay. Nothing is more important to Southwest than the safety of its customers and employees.”
