Muslim Group Wants Spirit to Apologize for Booting Passengers
Joe Cortez November 19, 2015
Council on American-Islamic Relations is decrying Spirit Airlines, demanding an apology to the group removed from a flight.
The Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is rallying against Spirit Airlines, claiming they treated a group of four flyers unfairly by removing them from a flight for “suspicious activity.” In a press release, the group denounced the low-cost carrier, demanding they provide a public apology to the group for their treatment.
“Americans of all faiths and ethnicities should be able to travel freely without being harassed or subjected to unconstitutional racial or religious profiling,” CAIR Maryland outreach manager Zainab Chaudry said in the statement. “These passengers were inconvenienced and forced to endure humiliating treatment and invasive questioning for no apparent substantial reason other than because their perceived ethnicity caused alarm in a fellow passenger.”
The statement is in response to an incident that took place on Spirit Airlines Flight 969, from Baltimore-Washington International Airport (BWI) to Chicago O’Hare International Airport (ORD), on Tuesday. Prior to takeoff, the group was watching a news report on a smartphone, which alerted another passenger. As a result, the captain returned the flight to the gate and police removed the group of four flyers. The group was ultimately released without charges.
Executives for CAIR allege the group was singled out because one of the flyers may have appeared to be Middle-Eastern. While they respect the sensitivity due to recent world events, including the Russian MetroJet incident and the attacks in Paris, the group claims that does not give airlines the right to discriminate.
“The threshold for ‘see something, say something’ is meant to apply to suspicious behavior, not personal prejudices against minorities engaging in non-suspicious behavior,” CAIR-Chicago executive director Ahmed Rehab said in a statement. “Watching news on your smartphone has never qualified as a security threat or as suspicious behavior and could have been easily vetted as such with minimal inquiry by the flight crew.”
Spirit issued a statement about the original incident on November 17, claiming the airline acted “out of an abundance of caution.”
[Photo: Spirit Airlines]
Jjmoore, Smartphones have the ability to preload videos, audios, etc to phones for later offline use. On top of that, you can now preload news articles and in fact the entire webpages for offline use. And you can easily watch news channels on TVs in the airplanes themselves. So what you are saying is that they were removed from the flight because they didn't turn off their phones? In that case, they have to remove more than 50% of people from the flights.
Jjmoore, you can download things directly to your phone for later use depending on phone, app, what video, etc. I download stuff all the time via Amazon Prime and can watch it without network access, so I'm sure you can do it from other sites.
why an apology, indeed. in this situation a passenger has the right to speak out. either remove them or me. either way it's going to be a delay.
oh well
Not a place to be discussing anything religious.