Call of Duty FaceTime Chat Sparks Airport Evacuation in California

A casual video chat about Call of Duty ended with a plane and part of a busy terminal being cleared out at Ontario International Airport in Southern California. According to the Ontario Police Department, a passenger was talking with a friend over FaceTime about the multiplayer mode of the military first-person shooter when another traveler overheard the conversation and mistook it for a bomb threat.

Officers responded by evacuating the entire east wing of Terminal 2 and the Frontier Airlines flight that was waiting to depart. The passenger who was on the call was detained, then released. Travelers were allowed to walk back onto the plane once the situation was resolved, and the flight took off without any further problems.

The episode is a reminder of how quickly ordinary conversation can be read as a threat in a crowded airport. Talk about violent video games is common among players, and it rarely signals anything more serious, but a single overheard phrase can set off a full response in a security-sensitive setting. The initial police statement did not say whether any charges would be filed against the passenger, and it was not clear from the report how long the evacuation lasted.