Robert Sayegh, 37, said Atlantic Southeast Airlines overreacted to his salty language when it summoned police aboard to escort him off the Sunday evening flight at Detroit Metro Airport. "The f-word is not a nice word to use," he acknowledged in a telephone interview, adding he was complaining to himself rather than snapping at anyone in particular.

"I really didn't think I was being that loud." Sayegh, who is also a television producer, was catching a connecting flight home after attending a relative's wedding in Kansas City, Missouri. He was, by his own account, feeling tired. The plane was not taking off. The explanation that there was a problem with the overhead compartments did little to soothe his irritation, he said.

And so, to no one in particular, he wondered aloud, using coarse language, what was taking so long. "I said the f-word," Sayegh said. Perhaps, he recalled, he said it twice. A flight attendant seated near Sayegh took offense. Soon he was being led off the plane by police.