Flight attendant facing charges of making bomb threat against his own airline

A Turkish Airlines flight attendant has been fired and is facing criminal charges after being suspected of making a bomb threat during a flight from Istanbul to Basel, Switzerland. The unidentified crew member was caught after his fingerprints were found on a note left in the cabin that said "There is a bomb aboard." According to Turkish newspaper Daily Sabah, the plane was somewhere over Bulgaria when the note was discovered and the flight immediately turned back toward Istanbul's Atatürk Airport.

In addition to that incident, there have been at least three other bomb hoaxes on Turkish Airlines flights this year (and here's where WestJet executives rub their own throbbing temples and say "We understand what you're going through.") The most recent scare was on July 7, when a Bangkok-to-Istanbul flight had to be diverted to Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport after a threatening message was written on a mirror in the plane's lavatory (as one writer pointed out, that was also the plot of Charlton Heston's 1972 thriller SkyJacked). The airline has not said whether the flight attendant will be investigated in connection with any of these incidents, as well.

In November 2013, former United Airlines flight attendant Patrick Cau was sentenced to 18 months in prison and forced to pay the airline $304,495 in restitution after he was found guilty of making eight bomb threats against the airline. Cau phoned the threats in after being fired by United in late 2012 and made some of those phone calls while he was in training to become a flight attendant for American Airlines.

Even though the threats against the Turkish flights have – fortunately – all been hoaxes, the cost for the airline can be substantial. According to some estimates, each bomb threat that results in a diverted flight or emergency landing could cost the airline up to €100,000 ($109,150).