- An American Airlines flight returned to Omaha 20 minutes after taking off.
- The pilots declared an emergency after mistaking an intercom issue for a security threat.
- Passengers ultimately reached Los Angeles more than four hours later than expected.
American Airlines passengers endured a flight to nowhere after the pilots mistakenly thought somebody was trying to breach the cockpit.
Flight 6469 departed Omaha, Nebraska, at 6:40 p.m. on Monday, headed for Los Angeles. The Embraer 175 was operated by the regional carrier SkyWest Airlines as an American Eagle flight.
However, less than 10 minutes after takeoff, it was circling back to Eppley Airfield in Omaha.
The plane landed at 7 p.m., having only reached a maximum altitude of about 10,000 feet, per data from Flightradar24.
In a statement, the Federal Aviation Administration said the flight declared an emergency “when the pilot could not contact the cabin crew.”
“After landing, it was determined there was a problem with the inter-phone system and the flight crew was knocking on the cockpit door,” it added.
An American Airlines spokesperson told the Associated Press that the intercom system, which pilots and flight attendants use to talk to each other, had been left on by accident.
They added that the pilots heard some static sound over the intercom and thought this meant somebody was trying to break in.
A SkyWest spokesperson told Business Insider the flight had “returned to Omaha out of abundance of caution after experiencing communication issues with a flight crew mic.”
Data from Flightradar24 shows that the same Embraer 175 again departed Omaha at 11:18 p.m. local time.
It landed in Los Angeles just after midnight Pacific Time — over four hours later than it was initially scheduled to touch down.
American Airlines did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent by Business Insider.
