The article in the CLE paper indicated that at least one of the pax was not amused:
...The flight's first officer told the attendant to announce that an emergency had closed Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, the flight's destination.
"I hear 'emergency at the airport' and the first thing I'm thinking is bomb," said passenger Stephen Hazan Arnoff.
Once on the ground, passengers fired up cell phones to call family members or arrange for rental cars. Then they discovered they were in Cleveland.
The first officer had played a "joke" on them, the frustrated flight attendant said, and was still laughing about it in the cockpit. Such a "joke" by a passenger would no doubt result in arrest at the gate.
Some didn't find it funny.
"It's like yelling fire in a crowded theater," said Hazan Arnoff, executive director of the 14th Street Y, a Jewish community center in Manhattan. He was visiting family and attending meetings in Cleveland.
Andrea Huguely, a spokeswoman for American Eagle, confirmed the incident, and it's now a "personnel issue."
Said Hazan Arnoff: "Those pilots should be fired."
Pilot's joke gets no laughs from passengers - Tipoff by Michael K. McIntyre - Cleveland.com