What many passengers at LAX yesterday evening believed was the announcement of a terrorist attack turned out to be the mistake of a contract worker.

Passengers at LAX airport's international terminal last night were horrified when monitors behind ticket counters lit up at 9:47 p.m. with the note, "An emergency has been declared in the terminal. Please evacuate." Many passengers began the evacuation process thinking that an emergency was in place, but LAX officials confirmed that an airline contractor with authorized access to the display system accidentally caused the override of screens that normally display the status of flights.

"After the mistake was discovered, airport staff removed the message from all the monitors by 9:54 p.m.," said LAX spokeswoman Nancy Castles via e-mail.

The spokeswoman said the worker was not a full-time employee at LAX, but rather a contract staff member. She confirmed that the employee was "programming airline check-in information into a set of monitors for a particular flight when he accidentally activated the pre-programmed emergency terminal evacuation message."

Castles apologized for the incident and said that the airport's technology staff are now looking into ways to prevent similar mishaps in the future. The worker has also not been disciplined for the incident.

Officers initially believed that the monitor display was not a sign of a terrorist attack, but rather the work of a hacker. They swarmed the terminal near the boards to find out who was responsible, only to realize that the incident was simply human error.