Math can be scary, but it shouldn’t be that scary.
An American Airlines flight was delayed by hours after a woman reported her seatmate might be a terrorist. In reality, he was an Italian-born Ivy League economist working on a quantitative model.
The Philadelphia Inquirer reported Guido Menzio, a University of Pennsylvania economist, was on a flight from Philadelphia to Syracuse Thursday when the woman sitting in the seat next to him passed a note to a flight attendant. Menzio was working on a math equation in his notebook.
The woman was approached by a flight attendant and left the plane and later the flight attendant returned and asked Menzio to leave the plane with her. He was questioned by authorities and told that the woman thought he was a “terrorist,” according to the report.
Menzio wrote in a Facebook post that he laughed and brought the investigators onto the plane to show what he was writing. It turned out to a model he working on for a working paper he was presenting at a conference, not some sort of terrorist code.
“The lady just looked at me, looked at my writing of mysterious formulae, and concluded I was up to no good,” Menzio wrote on Facebook. “Because of that an entire flight was delayed … Trump’s America is already here. It’s not yet in power though. Personally, I will fight back.”
The flight eventually left hours after it was supposed to and arrived in Syracuse with no problems. The woman did not return to her seat, according to reports.
