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Oz carrier Tiger Air takes terror alerts to new heights
Don't doodle, it might cost you your flight
If you plan to fly in Australia, at least try to act as if you take the threat of terrorism seriously, or you might get hauled off the plane, handed over to the cops, and banned from an airline.
It's with some incredulity that The Register reports that one Oliver Buckworth, who doodled that “In a land of melting ice-cream, sandy feet and fluffy bears, how could anybody be fearful of terrorism?” in a notebook was slung from a Tiger Airways flight on the weekend.
Fearfully, Buckworth also created a visual pun with the word “terrorismadeup” picked out in different colours to suggest that “terror is made up”. Oh, and he drew a chandelier design in the notebook, because he's an interior designer.
Citing its “zero tolerance” policy “towards inappropriate and antisocial behaviour”, the airline told Fairfax its crew was merely responding to a “disruptive passenger” when they called the Australian Federal Police, had Buckworth “offloaded” from the flight.
The AFP, Fairfax reports, put Buckworth through “a background check”, has decided it hadn't caught a mister big of any kind, and doesn't intend taking further action.
Oliver Buckworth's fateful doodle
Buckworth has now been blacklisted by Tiger for an indeterminate amount of time. ®