Yesterday I wrote a post about travel weirdos who inspire us to think and travel outside the box. After I wrote that post, I heard on the radio about a hijacker in Mexico who threatened an Aeromexico plane with what turned out to be a fake bomb as the plane was traveling between Cancun and Mexico City. As Katie posted, all’s well that end’s well. Passengers weren’t hurt and the hijacker was apprehended after the plane landed.
The news version of the hijacking that I heard is a nod towards the travel weirdness of yesterday. Here’s the scoop about the hijacker, a man named Jose Flores, that might have you glancing suspiciously at passengers boarding your plane …
According to the NPR story I heard, the reason Flores, a “Bible-carrying religious fanatic,” hijacked the plane was to get the attention of Felipe Calderon, Mexico’s President, to tell him about an impending earthquake. The hijacker knows about this earthquake because he saw it in a vision — a “divine revelation,” if you will. The reason he hijacked the plane yesterday was because of yesterday’s date. See? The date was weird. A vision told him so. Plus, it’s upside down 6s, so what do you expect? (Personally, I think the date looks like people dancing, but that’s just me.)
What adds to the weirdness of this story is that most passengers didn’t even know there was a hijacker in their midst until after the plane landed and they saw all the security vehicles and armed people surrounding the plane. The hijacked plane, from what I gather, took off from Cancun and landed in Mexico City as intended.
For an interesting analysis of yesterday’s date, check out this article in the Times of India. Yesterday’s date isn’t the only one that has attracted attention.
**correction. The hijacker was Bolivian, not Mexican.