September 11, 2011 Lav-Locked Pax Draw Fighters

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By Russ Niles, Editor-in-Chief

Three people who locked themselves in an airliner bathroom on a flight to New York on Sept. 11 will likely get to explain exactly what they were doing in there to the Secret Service and FBI. The three passengers, whose gender distribution was not immediately known, went into the lav at some point during the American Airlines flight from LAX to JFK and stayed there until after it landed. The aircraft was escorted part of the way to New York by two F-16s and landed otherwise uneventfully at 4:10 p.m. EDT.

The nature of the threesome's business in the lav wasn't immediately revealed but an airline spokesman told The Associated Press that terrorism was apparently not on their minds. "In our eyes, it's a big nothing," said American spokesman Tim Smith.