No one's taking the airline's side here, but he shouldn't have brought up terrorism. That was a mistake in judgment on his part, as I explained elsewhere.
The irony here is that you're demonstrating the same sort of knee-jerk misinterpretation that arises when people say "terrorism" on an airplane.
I still don't understand why using the word "terrorist" is a no-no. It is a word. Context matters. Context in this case would suggest there was nothing to worry about.
I swear sometimes it is like the whole world is a slightly mentally handicapped child who, upon hearing a bad word, starts repeating it getting more and more upset.
I guess being adults and thinking things through is too much to ask from your average full grown adult?
It's not the word itself. The word could be "terrorist" or "bomb" or "Muslim" or anything, really. It's denying some wrongdoing without having first been accused of it. Humans learn very early on to be suspicious of people who offer denials prior to accusations, and we likewise learn in childhood not to offer such denials ourselves.
When no one has accused you of stealing a cookie from the cookie jar, saying out of the blue, "I didn't steal the cookie from the cookie jar" instantly makes you a suspect. This is Encyclopedia Brown level stuff.
(As an aside, your lack of intuitive understanding of this principle, combined with your righteous indignation and judgment of the world at large, makes me feel very much like you describe while writing this reply.)
Except it wasn't used in that manner at all. As others pointed out, it's a fricken idiom and automatic response in a photographic context. http://goo.gl/CnV1s
It's the same as if he replied 'okay, don't worry, the photos will be dead and gone', and the flight attendant misinterprets that to mean he's going to blow up the plane and kill everyone.
If the story is as he's relayed it, he's absolutely 100% not at fault and the flight attendant is a total fricken idiot.
Yes. Words won't hurt you. When they can use words to bring down an aircraft then I care, but until that occurs then, they're just words.
Context matters. A sentence matters more than a word. A group of sentences matters more than just one. A conversation matters more than just a few sentences.
The irony here is that you're demonstrating the same sort of knee-jerk misinterpretation that arises when people say "terrorism" on an airplane.