WASHINGTON: Nine Muslims, including three children, were ordered off a domestic US flight after two other passengers heard them making what they thought were suspicious remarks about security.
The passengers, eight of whom are US citizens, were in Washington Thursday afternoon on an AirTran flight bound for Orlando, Florida where they were to attend a religious retreat. They were eventually cleared for travel by the FBI, the Washington Post reported. The airline and FBI called the incident a misunderstanding, but AirTran reportedly refused to rebook the passengers, who had to pay for seats on another carrier.
Kashif Irfan, 34, said his younger brother Atif and his brother’s wife were discussing the safest place to sit on the plane, when they were overheard by two young girls who reported them to a flight attendant.
“My brother and his wife were discussing some aspect of airport security,” he told the Post. “The only thing my brother said was, ‘Wow, the jets are right next to my window.’”
Atif Irfan told CNN television they had been “careful not to use any buzz words like ‘bomb’, ‘threats’, anything that would put us in a volatile situation.”
While he said the air marshals and FBI agents were “pretty kind and generous” while dealing with the situation, he blamed the airline for the incident. “The FBI agents actually spoke with the AirTran personnel at Washington Reagan (National) Airport and encouraged them to let us fly again in another flight toward Orlando,” he said.
“AirTran refused, despite the fact we were cleared of any wrongdoing.” The airline “clearly stated,” said Atif, that the family members would be barred from boarding a flight or booking a reservation with the company “anytime in the near future.”
Irfan, who was also traveling with his wife, a sister-in-law, a friend and Irfan’s three sons aged seven, four, and two, said action was taken against his group because of the way they looked. All men were sporting beards and the women were in head scarves.
An airline spokesman, Tad Hutcheson, defended AirTran’s handling of the situation. “At the end of the day, people got on and made comments they shouldn’t have made on the airplane,” he was quoted as saying. “Other people heard them, misconstrued them. It just so happened these people were of Muslim faith and appearance,” Hutcheson added. “It escalated, it got out of hand and everyone took precautions.”
The pilot delayed the flight, and federal officials ordered all 104 passengers off the plane to re-screen them and their luggage before allowing the flight to fly to Orlando, two hours late and without the nine passengers.
Ellen Howe, a spokeswoman for the Transportation Security Administration, said the pilot acted appropriately.
“It was an ordeal,” said Abdur Razack Aziz, one of the removed passengers. “Nothing came out of it. It was paranoid people. It was very sad.” He said he would consider a lawsuit.
