Teenager jailed for airline bomb threat
A teenager who asked a friend to phone a bomb threat to the Philadelphia airport to avoid missing her flight to London was sentenced today to a year in prison.
Hatice Ceylan, 19, of New Jersey, was also ordered with her friend to reimburse American Airlines $9,075 (€7,000) and pay $100 (€76,80) to each of the 17 or so people aboard a flight delayed by the bomb scare.
Ceylan was also given three years probation after she gets out of prison.
Last spring, the teenager lost her passport shortly before she was scheduled to fly from Philadelphia to Boston, and then connect to a flight to London.
Realising she could not recover her travel papers in time, she had a friend in England, Ilays Savas, call a hotel at the Philadelphia airport and claim that someone was planning to put bombs aboard both planes.
Officials stopped an American Airlines jet in Philadelphia as it was about to take off so it could be searched. The flight from Boston to London was also delayed.
Ceylan never got on the flight. She and Savas, 33, were arrested in June after they tried to redeem the unused tickets. Both pleaded guilty last year.
Savas was sentenced last month to 18 months in prison.
