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Muslim Family Excluded From AirTran Flight
The question seemed harmless, a nervous habit that Atif Irfan always had when flying.
Mr. Irfan turned to his wife, Sobia Ijaz, as they boarded AirTran Flight 175 at Reagan National Airport near Washington Thursday afternoon, and wondered aloud where the safest place to sit on the airplane would be — the front? The rear? Over the wing?
But passengers sitting behind them evidently overheard the remark, saw Mr. Irfan’s beard and his wife’s head scarf, and grew concerned. Mr. Irfan and his wife, along with six members of their extended family, are Muslims, and were on their way to a religious conference in Orlando when they boarded the flight.
The worried passengers contacted flight attendants, who contacted Transportation Security Administration officials, and soon, Mr. Irfan and his wife were off the plane and being questioned in the jetway. The six remaining family members in the traveling party were taken off the plane as well, along with a family friend who happened to be on the same flight and who happens to be a lawyer for the Library of Congress.
Next, the nine Muslim passengers — all but one are United States-born American citizens — were taken to a quarantine area in the passenger lounge where they were questioned by F.B.I. agents. Mr. Irfan’s three small nephews were denied access to food in the family’s carry-on luggage.
Before long, Mr. Irfan told The Lede in an interview Friday morning, the F.B.I. concluded that the incident was obviously just a misunderstanding, and told AirTran officials that the family was cleared to travel. But he said AirTran still refused to rebook them, offering only to refund their tickets. The F.B.I. agents helped the family get on a later USAirways flight to Orlando, but those seats cost them twice as much.
The incident, first reported by CNN and The Washington Post, was an uncomfortable reminder for Mr. Irfan, a lawyer and Detroit native who now lives in Alexandria, Va., of the challenges facing Muslims in the United States and the ethnic profiling that occurs in many contexts.
“To be honest, as a Muslim, we do understand how to deal with this, we realize this is an unfortunate aspect in our lives,” he said by telephone from Orlando. “Whenever we get on a plane, because of the color of our skin, people tend to look at us with a weary eye anyway. Of course it was very embarrassing.”
The most embarrassing part of all, Mr. Irfan, came when AirTran told everyone on the the airplane to disembark, so officials could sweep the plane; the passengers all walked directly past Mr. Irfan’s family in the terminal.
AirTran defended its handling of the situation. In a revised statement issued on Friday, the company says that when it denied the family rebooking, it had not yet been told they were cleared to travel:
At departure time, the Captain of flight 175 informed the airline that there were two federal air marshals onboard who contacted local and federal Washington law enforcement officials for a security related issue onboard the aircraft involving verbal comments made by a passenger and overheard by other passengers. The airline then advised the Transportation Security Administration (T.S.A.). It was determined that all 104 passengers onboard must deplane and passengers, crew, baggage and the aircraft should be re-screened. After the re-screening of the passengers, crew, bags and the aircraft, 95 passengers were allowed to reboard the aircraft and nine were detained for interrogation by the local law enforcement officials, the F.B.I. and the T.S.A. Flight 175 departed nearly two hours late and arrived safely at its destination.
Later in the day, six of the nine detained passengers approached the customer service counter and asked to be rebooked to Orlando. At the time, the airline had not been notified by the authorities that the passengers were cleared to fly and would not rebook them until receiving said clearance. One passenger in the party became irate and made inappropriate comments. The local law enforcement officials came over and escorted the passengers away from the gate podium.
AirTran Airways complied with all T.S.A., law enforcement and Homeland Security directives and had no discretion in the matter. The nine passengers involved were all offered full refunds and may fly with AirTran Airways again after having been released from questioning from and cleared by the law enforcement officials.
The family, naturally, doesn’t see it that way. They have already been in touch with the Council on American-Islamic Relations, an advocacy group. Ibrahim Hooper, director of communications for the council, said the organization is working with AirTran to resolve the matter in an amicable way.
“This was handled badly by AirTran — they were quite belligerent in the beginning,” Mr. Hooper told The Lede in a telephone interview. “But as they saw the facts come out, they have become more conciliatory.”
An AirTran spokesman, Tad Hutcheson, told The Washington Post that the airline’s better-safe-than-sorry approach was appropriate and minimized the ethnic-profiling aspect of the story:
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. 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.
But Mr. Irfan said that at no time did he or his wife utter the word “bomb” or any other word that could be taken as suspicious. He said the two passengers who seemed to be taking note of his conversation with his wife were teenage girls.
Mr. Irfan said the family is waiting to see whether AirTran will do anything more to resolve the matter. “We’re not looking for some big payout,” he said. “We just want something that would put us back where we started.”
By Liz Robbins
New York Times