Brand New Year

Same old bullshit.

Officials ordered nine Muslim passengers, including three young children, off an AirTran flight headed to Orlando from Reagan National Airport yesterday afternoon after two other passengers overheard what they thought was a suspicious remark.

Members of the party, all but one of them U.S.-born citizens who were headed to a religious retreat in Florida, were subsequently cleared for travel by FBI agents who characterized the incident as a misunderstanding, an airport official said. But the passengers said AirTran refused to rebook them, and they had to pay for seats on another carrier secured with help from the FBI.

Nice, eh? Pay for our fuckup! And in case you were wondering what the "suspicious remark" was:

Kashif Irfan, one of the removed passengers, said the incident began about 1 p.m. after his brother, Atif, and his brother's wife wondered aloud about the safest place to sit on an airplane.

"My brother and his wife were discussing some aspect of airport security," Irfan said. "The only thing my brother said was, 'Wow, the jets are right next to my window.' I think they were remarking about safety."

Okay, in all seriousness, who has flown in their lifetime that hasn't had this very conversation? I know I've joked with others that, after seeing Alive, there's no way I'm ever sitting in the back of the plane, and I've said that I hate window seats by the wing because I hate being able to see the engine; I've mentioned that sitting right by the wing makes me nervous for other reasons. Funny, I've never been booted or "detained" or refused entry on a flight. Wonder why that is?

Anyway, here's the part that really made me angry: (emphasis mine)

"At the end of the day, people got on and made comments they shouldn't have made on the airplane, and other people heard them," Hutcheson said. "Other people heard them, misconstrued them. It just so happened these people were of Muslim faith and appearance. It escalated, it got out of hand and everyone took precautions."

[...]

Ellen Howe, a spokeswoman for the Transportation Security Administration, said the pilot acted appropriately.

"For us, it just highlights that security is everybody's responsibility," Howe said. "Someone heard something that was inappropriate, and then the airline decided to act on it. We certainly support [the pilot's] call to do that."

Why the hell would these comments be comments that "shouldn't have" been made? Why the hell is talking about the safest place to sit on an airplane "inappropriate?"

Oh, because they were made by scary brown people in even scarier clothing with shit-your-pants scary beards.

Good thing one of them didn't take their shoes off. They may have been shot.