United Airlines flight to Spain pulls U-turn, apparently over Bluetooth device name

A United Airlines flight from Newark, N.J., to Palma de Mallorca, Spain,
pulled a U-turn late Saturday over what appears to have been a
suspiciously named Bluetooth device on board. 

Flight tracking data shows that the flight, which should have landed in
Spain after a nearly eight-hour flight, instead returned to Newark after
4 hours and 24 minutes in the air. 

United Airlines told NPR via email that the flight turned around "to
address a potential security concern." Multiple posts on social media
from self-identified passengers indicate that the problem was a
Bluetooth device on board the plane. Several of those passengers posted
photos or videos of them on board the flight or in the airport, with
timestamps that match the flight's actual schedule. 

Some passengers knew little more than that the flight attendants had
asked passengers to turn off their Bluetooth devices. One post
referenced in-flight announcements with "lots of comments like 'this
little joke is ruining it for everyone.' " 

Audio from air traffic control, archived by LiveATC.net, sheds a little
more light on the situation. One voice on the recording asked what had
happened with the flight, which had recently landed back at Newark and
remained on the tarmac. 

"There's a security detail out there, someone had a Bluetooth speaker
and they named it a certain four-letter word," another voice responded.
"So they have to inspect the whole aircraft including the cargo area
[and] passengers have to evacuate." 

"That's crazy," the first voice replied.

"Four-letter word," in this case, doesn't appear to refer to a curse
word, but rather a different four-letter word that triggered airline
security procedures. 

"There is an active Bluetooth network labeled 'BOMB,' " one
self-identified passenger wrote on TikTok. (She shared a video of
herself drinking sangria, geotagged to Palma de Mallorca, after the
flight finally arrived.) Another Reddit post of someone who claimed to
be the spouse of a passenger similarly reported that the word in
question was "bomb" and that the device was a teenager's speaker. 

The flight eventually reboarded and landed in Palma de Mallorca at 3:47
p.m. local time on Sunday, about 9 and a half hours late. 

https://www.npr.org/2026/05/31/nx-s1-5841913/united-airlines-flight-diver
sion-bluetooth