This is what this profiling nonsense comes down to. Khairuldeen Makhzoomi boarded a Southwest Airlines flight, and had a conversation on his cell phone with a relative.
On his way back to Berkeley, Makhzoomi, a loyal Southwest premier rewards member, boarded his flight to Oakland and called his uncle in Baghdad to tell him about Ki-moon’s event. At the end of the phone call, conducted in Arabic, Makhzoomi said goodbye to his uncle with the phrase “inshallah,” which translates to “if God is willing.”
When Makhzoomi hung up, he noticed a female passenger looking at him. Once he made eye contact with her, she got up and left her seat.
“She kept staring at me and I didn’t know what was wrong,” he said. “Then I realized what was happening and I just was thinking ‘I hope she’s not reporting me.’”
Minutes later, an airport employee arrived to remove Makhzoomi from the airplane. Makhzoomi was escorted onto the passenger boarding bridge where he was met by three security officers.
Yep. He was kicked off the flight and interrogated by the FBI. This is rank madness. If anyone should have been kicked off, it’s that paranoid woman who reported him for speaking a foreign language.
Southwest Airlines released a statement about the event.
A statement from Southwest Airlines says that prior to departure, the flight crew decided to investigate
potentially threatening commentsmade by Makhzoomi aboard the aircraft.
We wouldn’t remove passengers from flights without a collaborative decision rooted in established procedures,the statement reads.We regret any less than positive experience onboard our aircraft. … Southwest neither condones nor tolerates discrimination of any kind.
Yeah, right. Then perhaps they could tell us all what the potentially threatening comments
that informed their decision to refuse service to a customer might have been?
“If anyone should have been kicked off, it’s that paranoid woman who reported him for speaking a foreign language.”
Yep and she does not even know a word of Navajo, Ojibwa, or Choctaw.
A related Grauniad article, from last week.
But we are happy to implement it.
Interesting. In my experience unclear language can sound like practically anything. It doesn’t even matter very much if I actually know or speak the language since all sorts of things can muddle it up. And the brain, ever the enthusiast, will still try to interpret the noise. Which is why it’s not something I’d consider raising an alarm over.
Well the US will just go back to the setup that several US states took during World War I, ban the language in public (in that case German) so that any speaker will indeed be a criminal. In Nebraska even German in private religious schools was banned. A resulting case went to the Supreme Court (Meyer vs. Nebraska).
Besides, which terrorist would be so dumb to talk about their plans on the phone in a language that plenty of people WILL understand? I can only wrap my head around this if the reporting person believed that everyone speaking Arabic must be in collusion.
@4 Erp: Which is a great way to ensure that you’ll soon run out of people who can translate the enemy’s speech or try to convince civilians over to your side.
@ komarov #3:
Oh, so it’s like the four-year-old kid who said “cooker bomb!” Er, I mean… “cucumber.”
This isolated incident is one thing, but I’m actually most worried about the fact that this is apparently consistent with “established procedures.”
That’s code for absolving people from any responsibility.
Also note the ubiquitous bullshit-speak:
(emphasis mine)
Because saying negative would be too negative.
@komarov #3:
I was once offered mice in a restaurant in Northern Italy.
Don’t ask.
Jim Phynn@8, “This isolated incident[…]” — not to detract from your point, but, unfortunately, this incident is not that “isolated”. In The Grauniad’s report, quoted more extensively in the Moments of Political Madness thread, some other examples are mentioned or alluded to. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair) is quoted as saying: “We are tired of Muslim-looking passengers being removed from flights for the flimsiest reasons, under a cryptic claim of ‘security’.”
They don’t mention what happened to his luggage. I would have said “Could you please leave my luggage on the plane so that it’ll be waiting for me when I arrive?”. That would have probably caused them to take all the luggage off the plane and search it, delaying the plane for hours without mentioning a bomb or threats of any kind.
Here’s a fun part of that “established procedure”.
Each and every airplane ticket is a contract of carriage. In this case, the airline established a material breach of contract by not carrying their passenger, although there is a modest escape clause in the ticket contract.
By their habituation of deplaning passengers for mythological “threats”, they’ve fully established a fundamental breach of contract, where the contractee has absolutely no hope of the airline completing the contract.
Yes, I’m absolutely serious, prosecute the entire clusterfuck as a fundamental breach of contract, seeking punitive damages. Personally, I’d go for the entire worth of the airline, times three.
But then, I never did subscribe to Wheaton’s rule, my lawyer can beat up their lawyer and I also happen to both have an “anybody face”, have a security clearance and speak Arabic.
As each and every airplane ticket is a contract and has an escape clause that essentially says that the airline doesn’t have to carry the paying customer for any reason, how do you think that’d play out to a jury of our peers? A contract to take money and not transport the paying passenger?
Yeah.
So, who wants to fly my new airline? :D
Chengis Khan (1)
D__n it, where’s the upvote button?
jy3, I’ve been asking that very fucking question. Daily. ;)
@wzrd1 #13 It baffles me that something like this would be legal. O_O
Well, F.O., the US has to keep the world safe for terrorism.
several months ago, SW refused service to one Arab-American citizen (with a fully paid ticket), twice in a row. abandoning him in a city far from his home city (both in America, BTW). [the full story can be easily found, but I’m too rushed to find it at the moment]. It has not been long enough to file it under “past mistakes”, so I find this statement of theirs pretty disingenuous.
It appears the Supreme Court told Nebraska “fick dich ins Knie”. So can Southwest be sued based on this precedent?
Re: Rich Woods, #10
Specialty of the house? Besides, isn’t there an American expression that goes, ‘If life gives you lemons, make lemonade?’ So therefore…
Re: wzrd1, #13
Hang on, isn’t it normal for virtually every contract between [giant corporation] and [private person] to have reams of small print devoted to enabling the company to shirk its responsibilities? Surely this is such an entrenched practice that any jury would just go, ‘Well, of course they have to do what they agreed to do for payment unless they don’t want to. Duh!’ Or maybe I misunderstood where you were going with your post.
By the way, apparently running an airline isn’t that much fun, what with them always being half a plane crash away from bankruptcy.* I’d take the money and run. If your lawyer is that good you could settle for the money and a first class ticket to a destination of your choice.
*Planes and passengers are very expensive for some reason, even though there are entire airports full of them.
Back when I flew them Southwest didn’t have a first class section. I rather liked that about them. I don’t fly them any more because 1. they have no routes between the US and Europe and that seems to be most of my flying these days and 2. the “obese passenger” case a few years ago where they established themselves to be discriminatory jerks.
Maybe wzrd can sell of the airline that he won in his lawsuit and build a rail system with the proceeds. I’d ride that, assuming he doesn’t insist on driving it personally while he’s on sedating antihistamines.
Or while playing iPhone games.
But I doubt this breach of contract would hold up in court. Airlines screw over their passengers in myriad ways without suffering for it.
That said, owning an airline when fuel prices are low is a great time to sell it off.
I can’t wait for Richard Dawkins and Dusty Smith to accuse Makhzoomi of deliberately pretending to be a terrorist for some nefarious reason.
@ 10. Rich Woods and
@ 20. komarov
I suppose they offered you mais (pronounced as mice), the Italian word for corn.
Luciano
Copying what I posted at Ed Brayton’s blog:
I think I read that Southwest is flatly refusing to fly him home at all, on any flight. I wish enough proper contract law survived so this guy could sue the airline at least for damages. He bought a ticket, which means he agreed to a contract with the airline: exchange of money for services. Their failure to provide the necessary services should be legally actionable in civil court, and he should clearly win. Unfortunately, the little guy is fucked nowadays in such matters.
Further, on what basis does the FBI or any other person have the right to detain this person in this case? I read that there was an intrusive pat-down search, including genital area pat-down. If the complaining woman said that the guy was talking about blowing up the airplane, then that’s one thing, and in which case surely the woman can and should be charged with obstruction of justice, filing a false police report, something. If the woman just said that this person looks suspicious, since when can the FBI lawfully detain you and grope you just for looking suspicious? This is what a police state looks like. IMO, this should be a case of wrongful arrest.
Indeed. And back in the day, we used to have proper regulations to outlaw such abusive mass-market “take it or leave it” contracts. This is – was – a well-established norm of contract law and government regulations. We still have such regulations in the US to some extent, but it’s much, much weaker than what it was, and what it should be. I want a return of that proper contract law.
tbtabby, #23
Or for Sam Harris to congratulate Southwest for keeping white Americans safe and not wasting Jerry Seinfeld’s time.