An economics professor writing math equations while aboard an American Airlines flight to Syracuse was fingered as a terrorist by the woman sitting next to him who thought the equations were a terrorist language (read Arabic).

Professor Guido Menzio, who is an Associate Professor, Department of Economics at the University of Pennsylvania, was briefly detained on the ground by airport authorities at Philadelphia after the plane turned back following the woman's complaint he was writing something "cryptic" on his notepad.

Like Us on Facebook

The Ivy League economist is an Italian whose dark, curly hair might have made him look like a Middle East man. He is a theoretical macroeconomist interested in the behavior of markets characterized by search, matching and informational frictions, said the UPenn website.

Menzio, 40, later said he was solving a differential equation included in a speech he was set to give at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada.

 A spokesman for American Airlines said the woman expressed concerns about Menzio's "suspicious" behavior writing something she couldn't understand.

An airline security official questioned Menzio after the plane returned to the airport. Menzio was later released and the plane again left for Syracuse after a two-hour delay. The woman who started it all took a later flight, claiming she was too sick to travel on this one.

American Airlines, however, said the unnamed woman told a flight attendant she was feeling sick and wanted to return to Philadelphia. The pilot obliged.  

"I thought they were trying to get clues about her illness," Menzio said after he was questioned by the pilot and a security officer at Philadelphia.

"Instead, they tell me that the woman was concerned that I was a terrorist because I was writing (strange) things on a pad of paper."

American Airlines later said Menzio was determined not to be a "credible threat" after his interview by security personnel.

TagsGuido Menzio, university of pennsylvania, American Airlines, Queen's University, differential equation