This story happened a month or so ago but I just read a news report of it. Apparently Air Canada flight 8705 from Toronto to Cincinnati caused a bit of a stir when it was landing at Cincinnati. According to Fox 19 News, a woman went to baggage claim and reported she had a friend on the flight, who said the plane was being hijacked. She showed investigators a Facebook message saying both pilots were lying on the floor of the plane with their hands over their heads, according to the documents.
An officer can be heard reading the message in the body camera video.
“The person is saying, ‘I don’t know where we are. We are still flying. I think there’s trouble. Both pilots and co-pilots are not in the cockpit. They are lying on the floor of the plane with their hands over their head. Talk later before I get caught.‘”
Someone also messaged the woman, saying the plane was being diverted to Spain and then Detroit, the documents show.
Law Enforcement Meets The Plane
Hamilton County coroner Dr. Lakshmi Sammarco was on the flight. Sammarco was about to land at CVG when she noticed something unusual.
“I looked over to the right and saw eight or nine law enforcement vehicles with all their lights on on the taxiway next to the runway and I thought, ‘Hmm, I wonder what’s going on,” Sammarco explained. “They blocked our plane, and we stayed there for five to 10 minutes and nobody had any idea what was going on. We’re thinking is there somebody on this plane that these guys are after?” Sammarco pondered. “Hearts a little racing. We’re looking around trying to see if there was anyone suspicious on the plane. Nobody’s telling us anything.”
The Bottom Line – Everything Is Fine
Everything turned out in the end to be fine – the pilots and copilots were not, in fact, tied up in the cockpit. They were flying the plane normally, and the plane landed normally. All passengers were fine and it turned out to be caused by one passenger on the plane being caught up in a scam. The Cincinnati airport issued this statement on the incident:
We take any type of reported threat very seriously. For this incident on January 19th, our airport police worked with the airline and the FAA to investigate and respond to the situation, which resulted in no threat to the aircraft and the traveling public. This turned out to be a case of an individual being scammed.
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Dan Miller travels with his wife and 6 (SIX!) children. He loves to help families travel for free / cheap, especially larger families. If you are looking for help, drop him an email at 
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