Ridiculous Wi-Fi network name forces entire plane to be grounded

In the years since 9/11, you’ve probably heard urban legends about not being able to even say the word ‘bomb’ at an airport.

Maybe it was more than just an urban legend. Maybe your school trip almost got cancelled when your friend Sam joked about having a bomb “just to see what would happen”.

More likely, though, you’ve just accepted it and never put it to the test. After all, you’re already well aware how seriously bomb threats are taken.

If so, you’re more risk-averse than one individual on a Turkish Airlines flight from Nairobi to Istanbul.

This wouldn’t have been a problem in the past. It never used to be the case that you could get Wi-Fi on flights, but we’re living in the future now and we have to deal with everything it throws at us, from the bad to the even worse.

You’ve probably figured out what happened by this stage. Someone on the flight created a Wi-Fi network – fine. That same person named the network ‘bomb on board’ – much, much less fine.

So not fine, indeed, that even news.com.au branded the move ‘stupid’ in their report of the incident.

In fairness, you probably can’t go with that name and expect people to ignore it. And so it proved, with the plane getting grounded in Khartoum, Sudan when passengers raised the alarm.

“Experts said the Wi-Fi network in question was created on board,” reads a statement from Turkish Airlines, who operated the flight.

“No irregularities were seen after security procedures were carried out, and passengers were brought back on the plane once boarding restarted.”

So, yeah, maybe don’t set up a Wi-Fi network called ‘bomb on board’ when you’re on an aeroplane. Or, you know, other equally stupid names like this one.

Yes, I know, this shouldn’t even need to be said. But we’re living in the worst timeline right now, so we might as well just accept nothing is a given any more.

(Images: Gus Ruballo/iStock)