AI Summary
5 min read"Turn Bluetooth off, or we're turning around."
On a June evening in 2023, Ryan Jones boarded a United flight from Newark to Palma de Mallorca, Spain with his wife and two young children. They had already been traveling since 4 a.m. from Colorado. About an hour into the flight, the captain made a strange announcement: all passengers must turn off their Bluetooth devices immediately, or the plane would turn around. The order, he said, came from Chicago headquarters. Ryan, who runs a travel business focused on Mallorca with his wife, did what any curious person might do: he turned to Reddit.
The Reddit thread that became a live drama
Ryan posted on a United Airlines subreddit under his username Ryan_RoomService, asking if anyone had ever heard of a Bluetooth-related flight diversion. The thread quickly went viral. Other passengers on the same flight began chiming in, and aviation enthusiasts on the ground started monitoring flight tracking data. Someone posted that the plane had squawked 7700 — the emergency code. Redditors watching from home treated it like a live event, posting updates, jokes, and speculation. The thread hit the front page of Reddit, and passengers like Jack (username SkyJacker) and Jordan, a nurse practitioner from Little Rock, joined the online conversation from different parts of the plane.
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What you'll learn
- 1 (01:24) **The Setup: A Red Eye to Majorca** - Producer Grace Tatter introduces a real flight from Newark to Palma, Majorca, Spain, where strange announcements about Bluetooth devices begin.
- 2 (04:13) **The Reddit Thread Goes Viral** - The flight’s mystery unfolds in real-time on Reddit, with passengers and online spectators treating it like a drama.
- 3 (05:30) **The Initial Announcement** - Ryan posts the first update: flight attendants demand all Bluetooth devices be turned off, citing an order from Chicago headquarters.
- 4 (06:33) **The Emergency Squawk** - A Reddit user reports the flight has squawked 7700, the emergency code, escalating the tension.
- 5 (08:10) **Landing and Law Enforcement** - The plane lands and is surrounded by emergency vehicles, with passengers told to leave all belongings onboard.
- 6 (11:56) **The Hosts React** - Ben and Amory discuss the escalation and the unusual decision to turn the plane around instead of checking devices individually.
- 7 (13:34) **The Witness: Jordan’s Story** - Jordan, a nurse practitioner, describes the initial commotion before takeoff.
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Show Notes
The 190 passengers of a United Airlines flight from Newark, New Jersey to Palma de Mallorca, Spain had settled into their seats for their overnight flight when the captain gave an announcement: everyone had to turn off their Bluetooth devices — or he was going to turn around the plane. This confounded passengers, because Bluetooth is safe for airplanes. It stays enabled when devices are on airplane mode. United even encourages using Bluetooth headphones to connect to in-flight entertainment.
What was going on? The flight crew couldn't say. So the passengers took to...where else? Reddit.
Show notes:
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- UA flight - 'turn bluetooth off or we're turning around' (Reddit)
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