Save Your Bomb Jokes, the TSA Doesn’t Want to Hear Them

“Bomb jokes” at airports fail to amuse, yet incidents continue to occur around the world.

The story of a doctor fined nearly $90,000 after joking he had explosives in his carry-on luggage is just the latest in a string of episodes at airports. Amazingly, people have been making jokes about having weapons and explosives in their luggage almost immediately after the terrorist attacks September 11, 2001, which changed the face of airport security.

These poorly chosen jokes — like this incident at Miami International Airport (MIA) on October 22 and a similar incident in November 2012 at the same airport — aren’t just being made at U.S. airports. Last month, a New South Wales man allegedly made jokes about explosives while waiting at Olympic Dam Airport (OLP) in the South Australian outback.

When British student Samantha Marson made headlines in 2004 for her bomb joke at MIA, she was charged with falsely stating she had a bomb, which carries a penalty of 15 years in jail. The charge was dropped, however, when she agreed to donate money to the victims of the 9/11 attacks and offer a formal apology.

In the case of Manuel Alvarado, a neurosurgeon from Venezuela whose bomb joke shut down two concourses at MIA, his financial penalty of $89,172 went to the five airlines that had to delay flights following the incident, and to the Miami-Dade Police which deployed a bomb squad to search Alvarado’s luggage. Alvarado said he “had no intent to place anyone in fear,” and will live with the “biggest mistake of his life,” according to his attorney, Brian Bieber.

The TSA, airports and others continue to advise the traveling public that bomb jokes are no laughing matter. A recent editorial on CEBU Daily News even calls for an “intensified education campaign” to convey the serious consequences of such false alarms. The next time the urge to crack a joke with a TSA agent seizes you at the airport, ask yourself if the risk is worth the laugh.

[Photo: iStock]