An Aerolíneas Argentinas air hostess has been arrested for allegedly making a call warning that a bomb had been placed on the company’s flight from Buenos Aires Ministro Pistarini (Ezeiza) airport to Miami on Sunday 21, which was delayed for over nine hours.
The woman was detained when she arrived in the country on her most recent flight. She is accused of making the call to both the flight commander on his personal phone and other members of the company. Ezeiza airport was placed on alert over the call, implementing a security protocol that delayed the flight’s take-off. There were 270 passengers and 12 crew members on board.
Aerolíneas Argentinas sources told Télam news agency that Lomas de Zamora Federal Court is carrying out an investigation led by judge Federico Villena. They added that the crimes of public intimidation and obstruction of public services are major offenses, and if they are proven, the company will “sanction the person under investigation in a manner proportional to the seriousness of the act.”
On Sunday, May 21, Aerolíneas Argentinas flight AR1304 had to be evacuated at 07:35 a.m, just before takeoff to the U.S. city of Miami after the flight commander and ground staff received a threat. Ultimately, after confirming that the threat was fake, the flight took off at 4:50 p.m, more than nine hours late.
According to sources in the investigation, the threat consisted of a voice message that said: “Tell the captain that we’ve put three bombs on the Miami [flight]. That he should stop screwing about with politics and check the plane, because it’s going to explode into a thousand pieces.”
The voice was distorted, but investigators were able to establish its origin and that it was a woman’s voice, leading to the arrest of the hostess.
The courts are investigating whether the woman had, until two months ago, been in a romantic relationship with one of the cabin crew and used the threat as a distraction from her true motive: to make her ex’s life difficult. The sources say she had also sent messages to the pilot, saying that she “knew what school his daughters go to”.
Between the operation to evacuate passengers, reprogramming the flight to Miami, and the delays involved, Aerolíneas Argentinas reportedly suffered a loss of more than a million dollars.

-Télam