"Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

It doesn't matter to the content, but generally speaking, adding specificity to a story makes it sound more real and immediate to a general audience.

Would you write “person” instead?

I guess it doesn't, but it is useful for English pronouns later on. I'm curios what's idiomatic in languages without gendered pronouns. It'd be different if it called out her race.

Also, "Florida man" is a meme.

Titles are kind of about enticing readers while explicitly not giving away information that matters a lot.

So in this case the island name, gender, and flight number are all just part of the tease.

“[Place] [man|woman]” is a pretty standard, bordering on cliche, method of writing a headline.

Relax, francis

How does the island residency of the person matter so much either.