Passenger Accused of Claiming to Have Bomb at San Francisco Airport

In a case that could have been torn from the pages of ''How Not To Behave On a Plane, Post-9/11,'' an Oakland man is alleged to have drunkenly challenged a pilot at San Francisco International Airport to a fight and then claimed to be a terrorist with a bomb.

Jurubia Collins, 33, was arrested Tuesday at the airport after yelling and cursing at United Airlines staffers as a flight to Utah was about to take off, San Mateo County prosecutors said.

The pilot ordered him off the plane, and Collins allegedly tried to get him to fight. The pilot refused, and according to prosecutors Collins then said: ''If you are going to treat me like a terrorist, then I'm a terrorist. I have a bomb in my bag.''

Collins was charged with making a false bomb report, a misdemeanor, and could face up to a year in jail if convicted. He made his first court appearance Wednesday, and his bail was set at $15,000.

The U.S. Department of Transportation has not compiled figures for how often airline passengers have been arrested for making false bomb reports since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. But in the decade before the attacks, an average of 58 people a year were arrested on such charges nationwide, government statistics show.

The federal Transportation Safety Administration takes bomb threats extremely seriously, said spokeswoman Jennifer Pippen. "It's very difficult to decipher what's a joke and what's not in this post-9/11 world," she said.