A man has been arrested in India after faking an airport-hijacking in order to get out of going on vacation with his online girlfriend.
Wow, whatever happened to the good ol’ “I can’t make it, I’m not feeling well” excuse”.
According to local authorities, the 32-year-old married father was under pressure from his online partner in Chennai, India to take the relationship more seriously.
She suggested going on a holiday, which he could not afford.
But instead of explaining his financial situation – because apparently it would have “hurt his pride” – the man came up with an elaborate plan, NY Mag reported.
He created fake plane tickets for his girlfriend from Chennai to Mumbai and then set up a fake email address, which he used to send a hoax email to authorities.
In the email, the man pretended to be a woman who claimed to have overheard six men discussing plans to hijack planes in the cities of Hyderabad, Chennai, and Mumbai.
However, he didn’t anticipate the officers to trace his email’s IP address back to the internet cafe he used to execute the plan.
Deputy Commissioner of Police in Hyderabad told media that the man’s thinking was that “if the flight was to be cancelled and it was because of the airport, he wouldn’t be at fault”.
In addition to potentially losing his girlfriend, the man is also looking at facing up to five years in prison and a $150 fine.
Sadly, this isn’t the first time a man has used an aviation-related hijacking over a romantic entanglement.
In March last year a man flashed a make-shift explosive vest to staff on an EgyptAir flight from Alexandria to Cairo.
The reason for terrifying everyone on board? He wanted to re-route the plane to Cyprus so that he could see his estranged wife.
