A man made a false bomb threat so he wouldn’t miss a flight to LA, FBI says

ROMULUS, Mich. (AP)—A man who missed a flight to Los Angeles from Detroit called in a false bomb threat with the hope that any delay would allow him to get on the Spirit Airlines plane, authorities said Friday.

The 23-year-old man was charged with maliciously giving false information about an explosive.

The phone call caused a scramble Thursday morning at Detroit Metropolitan Airport. The FBI said passengers on the plane were removed, interviewed and screened again. The flight didn’t leave until six hours later.

“Making this kind of threat undermines our collective sense of security and wastes valuable law enforcement resources,” U.S. Attorney Jerome Gorgon Jr. said.

The FBI said investigators connected the man to the threat through phone records. He was arrested when he returned to the airport for another flight Thursday night.

He “stated that he made the call with the hope that it would delay the flight long enough for him to make it in time so he would not have to take a different flight,” the FBI said in a court filing.