Man on United Flight 2174 to New Orleans Claimed a Bomb in His Backpack and Tried to Rush the Cockpit: Arrested on Landing
A male passenger on United Airlines Flight 2174, flying from Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey to Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport in Louisiana on the night of November 9, claimed there was a bomb in his backpack and tried to rush the cockpit. The crew persuaded him to the rear of the cabin, and the flight landed safely in New Orleans at about 11:07 to 11:15 p.m., where deputies from the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office arrested him.
According to the sheriff's office, the Boeing 737 MAX 9 carried 46 passengers and six crew members. The pilots declared a Level 4 threat and squawked 7500, the hijack code. Crew members then talked the man into moving to the back of the plane, and the flight was not diverted. No real bomb was found.
The arrested man is Rony Alexander Gomez-Alberto, 34, a Honduran national living in the Bronx, New York. He was booked into the Jefferson Parish Correctional Center and held without bail on charges of communicating false information of planned arson and terrorizing.
The Department of Homeland Security said Gomez-Alberto had previously been deported twice, in September 2011 in Texas and in October 2014 in New Mexico, and that a judge ordered his release from ICE custody in January 2020. ICE lodged a new immigration detainer against him on November 10.
Source: Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 美国联合航空一架波音737 MAX 9客机（资料图）。图：4300streetcar，CC BY 4.0，经维基共享资源 / A United Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 9 (file photo). Photo by 4300streetcar, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
