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?
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.)
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.
It's part of an idiom, and that'a among a small niche community, mostly in London.
Even if the guy was aware of the idiom I doubt the staff were too.
Wait. A plane is an appropriate context for the word "terrorist" ?
Interesting.
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.
Quit acting irrationally. Think things through.