Harrisburg International Airport officials said an unauthorized political recording seized the terminal public-address system for about 10 minutes on Tuesday night, Oct. 14, 2025, prompting a precautionary 35- to 40-minute delay of one outbound Delta Air Lines flight but no broader operational impact. The incident occurred in Middletown, Pennsylvania; IT staff removed the audio and airport police opened an investigation. The message included profanity and references to President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and officials stressed there was no threat to passengers or facilities.
Similar intrusions were reported the same evening at Canadian airports. At Kelowna International Airport in British Columbia, terminal display screens briefly showed messages critical of Israel and President Trump, and the public-address system was also compromised; the airport said it was investigating. Transport Canada said it is working with federal security partners, including law enforcement, to assess safety impacts and mitigate future incidents. At Victoria International Airport, staff said an “unauthorized audio message” was traced to a cloud-based software issue and was shut down quickly; the airport apologized and reported brief service impacts while systems were restored.
In a separate, similar incident, Columbia University in New York reported that campus monitors briefly displayed images during a June 24 outage later attributed to a cyberattack and data theft. Officials did not link the screen takeovers to the theft.
In Washington, the Department of Housing and Urban Development said televisions at its headquarters briefly played an AI-generated video of President Donald Trump kissing Elon Musk’s feet on Feb. 24, 2025, with the words “Long live the real king” overlaid; staff shut the screens off and the agency opened an investigation.
Airport and higher-education security teams are treating these cases as reminders of risks to cloud-managed audio and digital-signage systems, urging tighter remote-management controls, multifactor authentication and alerting for unexpected audio or screen changes. For passengers at Harrisburg, the only impact was the loud broadcast and a single delayed departure; the flight later left safely.
