It was a well known fact to me in the 1960s, (and I was in grade school), that there is
no such thing as a joke about bombs or hijacking at the airport. Because of the serious nature of hijackings, (they were common in the '60s), the airlines/airports had a "zero tolerance policy" toward joking. How a professional airline pilot could not know this in 2003 is incomprehensible, I'm sorry, but he must be an
idiot. 