No, it’s not a missing scene from the 1980 movie Airplane! On Sunday, a plane was forced to make an emergency landing in Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego, after a passenger told the flight crew he was sitting next to a man who was looking at instructions for a bomb on his phone.
Passengers had to get off the plane and huddle by the runway, cold and scared, waiting for answers. Argentine gossip journalist Marcelo Polino reported from the spot, saying there had been a bomb threat, and that the Air Force and Airport Security Police were working to figure out what had happened. He even posted a video showing comedian Carmen Barbieri in a huge coat, making faces of mock horror.
The suspicious passenger turned out to be not a terrorist, but a local lawmaker playing a game on his phone.
“Something surreal happened to me today,” said Agustín Coto, a Tierra del Fuego provincial lawmaker from President Javier Milei’s coalition La Libertad Avanza, in a long X post Sunday night.
It all started on Sunday afternoon, minutes after 5 p.m. As his flight to Buenos Aires took off, Coto — an anxious flier — was trying to ease his nerves by playing a cellphone game called “Monster Demolition.”
That’s when he noticed the Brazilian passenger sitting next to him getting up and running to the back of the plane as it was still taking off. “I’d never seen anything like it,” said Coto.
After a few minutes, the pilot announced they were returning to Ushuaia airport, without explanation. The Brazilian man was still talking to the flight attendants.
Looking at his phone, Coto saw on the news that the plane had landed because of a bomb threat. He was still on edge from take-off, now even more so because of the unexpected landing.
“The Airport Security Police came to take away a guy, who turned out to be me!” Coto said. The officers carried out all relevant security protocols, including questioning him extensively and having a sniffer dog check him for suspicious scents. Ultimately, they determined it was a false alarm.
Coto then learned that the man sitting next to him — whom he called a “crazy crackhead Brazilian” — had accused him of being a “bomb-man.” Apparently, Coto’s game featured a segment that the passenger thought was a bomb tutorial. Since he didn’t speak Spanish, he tried to communicate this to the flight attendants as best as he could.
After the shock and confusion, the flight took off again at around 8 p.m., but the Brazilian passenger was not allowed back onto the plane. He remained in Ushuaia while the authorities took a statement and ran a background check to check whether he had any further motives for reporting a bomb threat mid-flight.