UPDATE: It was his ex-girlfriend, according to 6 ABC:

Philadelphia police and FBI authorities say it was a "pretty nasty trick" by a man's ex-girlfriend that resulted in a scare for passengers aboard a plane out of Philadelphia Thursday morning.

Bitch.

…

Chris Shell had a bad day today. It's his 29th birthday.

A little after 7 a.m. this morning, Shell, who lives in Philadelphia, boarded a US Airways flight bound for Dallas, Texas, where he’s from. You know, some family time on his big day. Before takeoff, he posted a picture of himself on the plane, along with his flight information, and bragged about his easy path through security. Seen here: [Facebook screen grabs via NBC 10, as I don’t have access to Shell’s profile]

Whether an idiot friend or vindictive prick needed those posts to play an elaborate birthday prank is unclear, but someone was about to fuck with Shell, US Airways, Philadelphia Police, the FBI, TSA, and every frothing-at-the-mouth-for-a-juicy-story-on-a-slow-Thursday local media outlet.

As you probably heard by now, Shell’s flight, US Airways 1267, was called back to Philadelphia shortly after takeoff. Someone phoned airport police around the time the plane departed and said that Shell had explosives on board. The Airbus A319, carrying 75 souls and 22,500 pounds of fuel, was ordered back to Philly, where it landed at 8:47 a.m., and taxied to the airport’s “hijack” area (the old international terminal).

Here’s the audio of the tower, pilot, and emergency services:

[via LiveATC.net]

At this point, Shell, wearing a PHL shirt, still had no idea what was going on. In fact, he thought the whole thing was quite, um, gay:

If the diversion didn’t sit well with Chris, I can only imagine what he thought when he was dragged off the plane in handcuffs, searched on the tarmac, and thrown into the back of a police car as dozens of other law enforcement vehicles from FBI, bomb squad, airport security and others surrounded the plane in a scene that played out live on NBC 10.

About two hours after all this, officials announced that they found no explosives on Shell and believed that he was the victim of a prank that will most likely land someone in jail. There are reports that the whole thing cost just US Airways alone tens of thousands of dollars, and that’s not to mention the cost of the massive law enforcement response. Officials said that Shell was cooperative and quite surprised when he was removed from the plane. What wasn’t made public, though, is if Shell had any idea who punked him. Maybe he does, maybe he doesn’t. But I'd start by looking at the comments on his Facebook post. Namely, this one: [name redacted, because we're speculating]

Yeah, there. I’d start there.