FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – A Canadian woman was arrested Tuesday at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport after making what she called a “stupid joke” about a bomb in a suitcase.

Nathalie Tremblay and her boyfriend had boarded an Air Canada flight bound for Montreal when a flight attendant asked whose bag would not allow an overhead bin to close.

According to the arrest report, Tremblay told the flight attendant “There’s a bomb in it” and began laughing.

Woman arrested after ‘stupid joke’ about bomb at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood Int’l Airport

Bombs have been a delicate issue with the airline industry for decades now. Wikipedia lists 41 incidents of planes down by bombs starting all the way to 1912, so you just simply do not joke about bombs.

There was friend of mine who witnessed in the 1980s exactly how seriously airlines take event the hint of bomb. I am not sure but I seem to recall it was a Pan Am flight from Caracas to New York and when the plane landed in Kennedy, it was swarmed by cops and the FBI. A team, came in and aimed guns a two gentlemen with a business look and demanded for them to keep their hands up and to say where the bomb was. The two men did not know what the hell was going on and in halting English said so. They got arrested and dragged off the plane. Everybody else was taken outside the plane, but not released till everybody got checked out.

It took forever but the issue was finally cleared: there was no bomb. What had happened was that a flight attendant had head this guys talk in Spanish and say a word very similar to “bomb” plus they were perusing a bunch of what appeared to be diagrams, so she went up front, told the captain who got in touch with authorities. They did use the word “Bomba” innocently because in Spanish not only means bomb but also pump as in water pump, fuel pump, etc. The gentlemen were owners of some sort of agricultural supply business on their way to do some company shopping mixed with some fun times.  By also an innocent mishearing, they were a fly’s ass hair away of getting their head pumped full of bullets.

This dumb woman deserves to get what she has coming to her, mostly for sheer stupidity.