Flight Anxiety

This morning a plane from Heathrow to Dulles (United 923) was diverted to Boston's Logan airport. Channel 7 news was the first to cover it here with live pictures of the plane already on the ground. The initial report was that three passengers created a disturbance and had suspicious items in their carry-on luggage. Then a few minutes later we heard a woman was tied up in the back of the plane. At this point other stations still weren't covering it. Then we heard that the woman had vaseline, matches, a screwdriver and a note referencing "al Qaeda".

The pictures showed the plane on a runway with nothing around it except for many police cars, fire engines, etc. But the people on the ground were calm. A staircase had been rolled up to the plane. There was one fireman and two other guys on the staircase just talking. It didn't look anything like police dealing with a terrorist situation.

CNN now covered it and had a report from the FBI that it was a just a woman who had an anxiety attack, and that it wasn't terrorism. Passengers were disembarking. The pilot had called in a passenger disturbance and there were two fighter jets escorting the plane.

CNN broke to a commercial, the first thing on was a commercial for a later CNN program with the caption "The Politics of Terror" and Paula Zahn saying: Tonight at 8, terror, anxiety, and voter manipulation. How might some politicians use last week's alleged terror plot to scare voters to the polls this fall." With all the craziness of the heightened terror alert, no wonder one of many passengers had an anxiety attack.

CNN came back on and got the vaseline, matches, screwdriver and al qaeda note from an AP story and then started asking some terrorism expert about it. Ridiculous.

Update: An hour into this, Channel 7 is reporting she didn't have the vaseline, matches, screwdriver or note (VMSN) but CNN is reporting that she did have the VMSN with a reporter saying he confirmed that with a "police office close to the investigation".

Update: 20 mins later, CNN is saying maybe she didn't have VMSN and they are reporting how in such situations even reliable sources have incorrect information. It's amazing to me that no one applied common sense that a terrorist wouldn't have VMSN. I mean al Qaeda uses suicide bombers, why would they have a note!