Several days ago, I wrote about (what I’d consider to be) a ridiculous situation, whereby an American Airlines flight diverted due to a text that a passenger sent. When I first wrote about this, I mentioned that I was curious what the air traffic control audio was like from this incident. Well, now we know, so I’m updating this post to add that…
American flight returns to San Juan over “RIP” test
On Thursday, July 3, 2025, American flight AA1847 was scheduled to fly from San Juan (SJU) to Dallas (DFW). The flight was operated by an Airbus A321 with the registration code N902AA, with 193 people onboard.
The plane took off at 6:26AM, and flew for a little over 10 minutes, climbing to just over 16,000 feet. However, at that point, the plane turned around, and diverted back to San Juan. It landed there safely just over 30 minutes after departure, at 6:58AM.
While flights return to their origin all the time, the cause of this incident was anything but ordinary. As it turns out, the plane diverted because a passenger observed another traveler receive a text message saying “RIP” (rest in peace), and interpreted that as a threat to her flight. So she reported that to the flight attendant, and it was ultimately interpreted as a bomb threat, causing the diversion.
In the air traffic control audio posted online, here’s part of the dialogue:
American pilot: “We are declaring an emergency. We’re gonna do an overweight landing here on the runway. You know, we have a threat onboard with text messaging between passengers and flight numbers, so we’re gonna need authorities at the gate to meet us to figure out exactly what’s going on here.”
Air traffic controller: “Is the cockpit secure?”
American pilot: “Cockpit is secure. We just have a threat from out back. We’re not sure if it’s even credible or not at this point. But, you know, the way the things are, this holiday weekend and everything else, we figured the best course it’s just to be as safe as possible.”
Air traffic controller: “And they wanna know the level threat.”
American pilot: “We have, we’re checking right now. We are at a possible level three, so we’re treating it like a level three at this point.”
For those curious, a level three threat is one with “life threatening behavior.” The only higher threat is a level four, which is an “attempted or actual breach of the flight deck.”
Once the plane was back on the ground, airport security personnel and the TSA boarded the aircraft, to inspect it and interview passengers. The passenger who received the “RIP” text message was able to prove that a relative had died the day before, and that’s why he was taking the trip.
An airport official clarified that “it was a mix-up that was handled in accordance with safety protocols,” and that “there was no real threat to the flight or its passengers.” The flight ended up departing again at 9:40AM, just under 3.5 hours behind schedule.
Who is at fault for this absurd diversion?
Perhaps hindsight is 20/20, but I think we can all agree that a diversion over a simple text message containing the term “RIP” is ridiculous. But who is really at fault for this diversion?
Of course there’s the snooping passenger, who decided to report this in the first place, and set off this whole chain of events. We always hear the motto “if you see something, say something,” though all too often, that’s used by clueless people to simply make claims reflecting their own biases.
I’d argue that the party really at fault for this diversion is the crew, for taking this seriously. I wonder, did the “concerned” passenger really just share what she saw? Did she tell the flight attendants “hey, I saw someone texting the term ‘RIP,’ I think they must have a bomb?” And then the flight attendant was like “yeah, wow, that’s really concerning, let me call the captain, we need to divert immediately?”
I think this also reflects the “better safe than sorry” approach that so many airline crews take. They’ll never get in trouble for erring on the side of caution, but if they ignore something that ends up becoming an issue, that’s more of a problem for them.
This is reflected in what the pilot told ATC. He acknowledged he wasn’t even sure if the threat was credible or not, but “you know, the way things are, this holiday weekend and everything else,” it’s best “just to be as safe as possible.” With that logic, you might as well just divert every flight!
What really amazes me is how quickly all of this happened. The plane started turning back toward San Juan just 11 minutes after takeoff. So during that short, critical phase of the flight, the passenger noticed the text message, alerted the flight attendants, the flight attendants alerted the pilots, and the pilots made the decision to return to San Juan? That’s all very fast.
Bottom line
An American flight returned to San Juan just over 30 minutes after takeoff, for a bizarre reason. A passenger was snooping on the texts of a fellow passenger, and saw them receive an “RIP” text. Somehow that ended up being interpreted as a bomb threat, causing the flight to divert. I simply have no words. I’m not sure if it’s worse that the passenger reported this, or that the crew acted on it…
What do you make of this American diversion?
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