The word "boom" found scrawled in the bathroom of a US Airways plane during a flight from Washington DC to Boston caused a brief bomb scare on Thursday.

Massachusetts state police with bomb-sniffing dogs swept flight 2024 after it landed in Boston's Logan Airport but found no explosives, said Ann Davis, a spokeswoman at the Transportation Security Administration.

"The pilot and command called ahead and notified TSA and the Massachusetts state police who met the aircraft and ultimately swept the aircraft using explosive detection canines," she said.

Davis said the writing was found by flight crew while the plane was in the air.