Newsstand - Korea Air flight does a 360 after lovesick boyfriend issues a bomb threat

A Korea Air flight leaving SFO today for Korea headed back to SFO after receiving a bomb threat then turned back again after finding out it was a hoax, according to sources at SFO.

Apparently the bomb threat came from a man whose girlfriend was on the flight. He allegedly issued the threat because he didn't want her to return to Korea. FBI arrested him before the Korea Air flight made it back to SFO. There was no bomb.



[This message has been edited by letiole (edited 12-30-1999).]

If you have a URL for this story, I'd appreciate it if you would post it here. Or did you see it on the television news?

Sheryl: I haven't seen this story anywhere yet (haven't looked at the morning paper yet either). My husband works at the ATC center that worked this flight.

Same day, also a ground stop on all flights for LAX due to a bomb threat there. It appears the Y2K crazies are out.

[This message has been edited by letiole (edited 12-31-1999).]

Whoops - please ignore

[This message has been edited by KenHamer (edited 12-31-1999).]

Here ya go:

URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/examiner/hotnews/stories/31/threat.dtl

For his girlfriend, man tries to delay flight by pretending a bomb was aboard

Love makes people do the most stupid things.

Take the sorry tale of Flavio David Mendoza, as told by the FBI:

Worried that his girlfriend, Young Ae Jeong, was going to miss her flight to Seoul because of a bad plane connection, he called Korean Airlines in San Francisco on Wednesday night and asked the airline agent to hold the plane.

No way, Rachel Insuk Lee told him. A plane can't be held for just one passenger.

That was at 9 p.m. Determined, or perhaps desperate, or perhaps hoping to get a more sympathetic agent on the phone, the 35-year-old Missouri man called again. And again. And again. Four times in all, in 3ì hours.

Each time, Lee answered the phone. And each time she told him: Forget it.

Finally, Jeong -- whose TWA flight was delayed leaving St. Louis -- arrived at the Korean Airlines counter Thursday at 12:45 a.m.

Flight 24 had still not taken off for Korea. But, she was too late to board the plane.

Five minutes later, an SFO paging operator received a call from a man stating that he was on a flight and had heard two individuals saying there was going to be an explosion on a Korean airplane leaving San Francisco "tonight."

The operator called the San Francisco Police Airport Bureau. The cops then called airline executives and air traffic control.

The plane was ordered back.

Meanwhile, Lee listened to the taped telephone call warning about an explosion. Yes, she told police, she was certain: The voice on the tape sounded just like the guy who kept calling her to hold the plane.

Mendoza's girlfriend listened to the tape, too. Yep, that was her boyfriend, Jeong, 29, told police.

When police called Mendoza at his home in Hazelwood, Mo., the FBI said that he at first denied making the call about the explosion.

But when he was told that the plane was returning, that all the passengers would be removed and that the plane was going to be searched for a bomb, Mendoza fessed up, said the FBI.

According to a federal court affidavit, Mendoza admitted he made the call about the explosion. There was no bomb on the plane, he told authorities. It was just a ruse to delay the plane's takeoff so that his girlfriend could board.

He added that "he was sorry and that he did not think it would go so far."

The ruse backfired in more ways than one.

Mendoza was arrested Thursday night after spending much of the day being interrogated by police and FBI agents. He faces a federal felony charge of using the phones to make a fake bomb threat.

On top of that, Mendoza's girlfriend never made that flight. Assured that the explosion call was a hoax, Flight 24 resumed its course for Seoul.

Mendoza will be greeting the millennium, and spending the weekend, in a St. Louis jail, awaiting a Monday court hearing.

©1999 San Francisco Examiner

So my sources were a little off on the motive, but for a while there it was a FlyerTalk exclusive report. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

Absolutely. And I'll fess up as to how I ultimately found the story. Right after I read your post last night, I posted about it on rec.travel.air asking if anyone had seen any media attention and if they could provide a URL. Someone posted it late this afternoon.

Good scoop, letiole.

Thanks for the breaking news/humor Letiole!

Remember the fuss a few years ago when it was learned that an American Airlines pilots manual said Latin American passengers sometimes call in a bomb threat when they are late for their flight. That reference was later deleted.
This scenario recently happened on a Continental flight to Nicaragua where a passenger was arrived late.
Regarding placing a bomb on his girlfriend's flight, this has actually happened. A terrorist once placed a bomb in his girlfriend's suitcase and asked her to fly from London to TelAviv. He said he would marry her but that he wanted to fly on another airline. She cursed at him at the trial.

Lucky for him he wasn't trying this stunt from over in Korea. We wouldn't be hearing from him for a long, LONG time...

A man who called in a bomb threat to SFO hoping to delay a Korea-bound plane so his girlfriend could catch the flight was sentenced yesterday to 10 months in prison.
Flavio David Mendoza, 35, told US District Judge Charles Legge that he hadn't intended to harm anybody when he made the call on 12/30. "I was always respectful of the law," Mendoza said. "After this experience, I will be even more respectful of the law."

A jury had convicted Mendoza in March of communicating false information, thereby endangering the safety of an aircraft in flight. Several calls Mendoza made to try to get the airplane delayed were rebuffed before he'd made the threatening call. The plane, which was routed back to San Francisco when the threat was made, continued to Seoul when the hoax was revealed.

To believe you are "30,000 feet over the Pacific Ocean with a bomb on board certainly has to be one of the most harrowing" experiences the flight crew has experienced, federal prosecutor Dave Hall said.