Flaming Lips Frontman Busted With A Grenade At The Airport

More details are starting to emerge about Flaming Lips lead singer Wayne Coyne’s run-in with airport security earlier this month, and most of them are a strange combination of troubling and funny. Apparently, the frontman was gifted a dead grenade at some point in the past. While packing to travel from Oklahoma City to Los Angeles, he put the grenade in the bag alongside a whole bunch of stuff he actually wanted to take, and that one mistake turned into a giant fiasco.

TSA agents immediately detected the grenade, and the discovery set off all kinds of alarms, triggering a closure of the entire terminal. According to TMZ, the situation likely could have been fixed sooner, but the airport didn’t actually have any bomb experts on duty. This caused numerous flights to be delayed and assumedly, thousands of connecting flights to later be missed.

Eventually, the proper authorities were able to determine that the grenade wasn’t a threat to anyone, and Coyne and all the delayed passengers were allowed to get in the air and on to their next destinations. Here’s a look at the musician’s apology immediately after the incident…

I wonder how whoever bought Coyne the grenade feels about this incident. On the one hand, you know he obviously loves the gift if he absent mindedly packed it without thinking over the repercussions. On the other hand, the purchase led to thousands of people being delayed and untold monetary losses.

Regardless, I’m pretty confident Coyne will never bring a grenade on a plane again. Lesson learned.