You can’t say “bomb” on an airplane

Even if you say “not”

When actor Adam Sandler BEN STILLER tells an airline hostess in the 2000 film Meet The Parents that he does not have a bomb, he is peremptorily thrown off the aircraft. Not because he tells her he does not have a bomb, but because he says the word bomb. The not is irrelevant.

His interrogator back on terra firma tells him clearly, “You can’t say bomb on an airplane.”

Well, just in case you thought Mr Sandler STILLER was making that up, he wasn’t. When an American Airlines jetliner was diverted yesterday from its true and honourable path between New York and New Delhi (to New Rome, in New Italy) escorted by Italian fighter jets (whose function in the whole episode is not entirely clear to me, given what follows), the pilot explained the diversion to his passengers as being due to a change in our security status, whereas the real reason was that someone had e-mailed American Airlines to tell them the plane was carrying a … that word.

I know pilots need to do a lot of training in a whole host of scenarios and situations, from what the knob on an altimeter does to how to cope when the entire tail breaks off the aircraft, but at what point do they learn the skills of bullshitting the passengers?

Now we have one more to add to our whole new vocabulary. Dee-ee-eye means the N-word. Efficiency is now wood-chipping. And changed security status means bomb.

Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb. (By the way, there wasn’t one.)

If you’re an enterprising scientist, you should apply for a research grant to Harvard to conduct a study into how people react (in terms of blood pressure, dilated pupils and neural activity) to a pilot’s announcement that

(a) their security status has changed,

(b) they are carrying a bomb, and

(c) it’s just a bit of regular turbulence, which leaves them hanging from an overhead luggage bin.

All you need to do is fiddle the data to produce the result that they want. Then, publish and be damned. Put that in your boot and march it.