Client crashes due to too much remaining air

This may sound like a Bukkit-Bug, but it is in fact a security-issue in the Vanilla Minecraft Client.
With Bukkit it is possible to set the remaining air of players, so I set it to Integer.MAX_VALUE every tick, because I didn't want them to drown.
This doesn't cause problems as long as they don't dive.
But as soon as they go underwater, the Client crashes and unfortunately doesn't print a stacktrace.
"[14:39:44 INFO]: Game ended with no troubles detected (exit code 0)"
I guess, the problem is, that the client tries to display MAX_VALUE bubbles in the HUD and therefore crashes.
I'm not sure, but I believe, that this wasn't a problem before 1.9.