Shame on AirTran
Filed under: Racism
It probably took about 1.1 seconds for their cell phone voicemails to fill up. AirTran may be bankrupt after the settlement on this.
“…I guess by association they deemed us unfit to fly their airline…”
The Irfan family and my man Abdul Aziz don’t have to worry about the recession we are in.
AirTrans statement:
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 (TSA). 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 FBI and the TSA. 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 TSA, 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 and cleared by the law enforcement officials.
Air travel is so awful now. Gas is way down, and yet we’re still paying that $15-25 baggage charge on many airlines. US Airways - can’t even get peanuts on those planes, they have no food on them.
Shame on you guys for holier than thou attitude. Given the situation Air Trans was in what wouldyou have the do? It’s not Air Trans fault that air travel and associated security measures have become such a mess. Stick to football, sneakers, and models.
*** The opinions expressed here represent my own and not necessarily those of TOW and its advertisers****
I usually don’t respond in full like this to comments, but I feel obligated to because initially this was not meant to be a holier than thou post at all. I have no problems in any way with the security measures taken by AirTran, the FBI, the TSA and the local law enforcement involved. I just find it interesting how this whole thing played and will play out in the coming weeks. The reason they are going to end up settling out of court for some insane amount of money is for reasons that had nothing to do with the initial security issue. The problem comes when they as a company fail to handle the situation appropriately after these United States citizens(all but one in the party were American Born) cleared security, and that is AirTrans fault. Where was management? If they felt that this family was such a threat, you would think that they would have been on top of things and known the progress of detained and being interrogated CUSTOMERS of theirs. To say that they couldn’t accommodate them because they hadn’t been notified of clearance yet, to me, is ridiculous. You can ask my crew, I have been on the detained and interrogated or held back from the group end of things more than once in situations similar to this. I usually don’t have a problem with it until after they find out everything is all good, but they still want to f#$% with me. When things like this happen one can’t just look at this as an isolated incident that happened in a vacuum and forget about it because it happened to some people that i don’t even know this time. These were United States citizens that were born here and pay taxes; who is to say that the next time this happens its not me or you.
As usual, we’ll said kid… Looks like we might have a future besides soccer, sneakers and models…
well said indeed….oh don’t forget music, music is importante too.
…movie trailers too, we got that going for us, which is nice.
ISPS: I don’t work for an airline or, for that matter, any agency affiliated with DHS. I do have about 20 years experience, along with a couple graduate degrees, in the international security business. I don’t like seeing an entire corporation slandered, on a footy site of all places, for following what is essentially correct procedure. If nothing else, I hope you use more discretion when you write your headlines in the future. Did you even read the rest of the story you posted below it? The fact is, AirTran responded correctly to a legitimate complaint. They had no way of knowing whether the claim was true or false but they had to respond. In fact, to do otherwise would have been true negligence. After that, the situation was for all intents and purposes out of their hands and under control of the TSA, etc. It’s a fact of life in the post 9/11 world you and I now live in.
Was the situation unfortunate? Yes.
Were the nine passengers who were pulled off the flight innocent? It’s very likely.
Will there be litigation or a settlement as a result? Maybe….maybe not. We don’t know. The law is most likely on the side of AirTran but the fiduciary penalties of even successfully defending potential lawsuits resulting from this incident may make settling out of court the better deal.
Regarding your question, “Where was [AirTran] management?” Like you, I wasn’t there so I don’t know but it wouldn’t be a stretch to believe that they were right at the terminal counter beside the agents trying their best to handle these 9 aggrieved passengers (who were inconvenienced and embarrassed but given full refunds) in addition to 95 other angry and inconvenienced passengers who had places to go and things to do. Can you even imagine what it must have been like for those gate agents and their supervisors? Apparently, you can’t.
Is air travel a pretty miserable experience these days for everyone involved? Yes….anybody who travels frequently has probably had the unpleasant experience of being detained on more than one occasion.
Did ISPS get way out of his lane and comment on something it’s pretty evident he knows nothing about? Most definitely.
I don’t like it when some knuckle-dragging national sports talk guy damns all the progress MLS has made in the last 10+ years after pulling a few recent Beck’s quotes about quality of play out of context. And that’s football….it’s just a game that I happen to love. You, on the other hand still see nothing wrong with slandering an entire company, employing thousands of hard-working Americans, for essentially doing exactly what it was supposed to do.
I’m done. It’s your site and you can have the last word.
Believe it or not, I visit here and all the other DP sites daily after the kids are in bed. I enjoy it and don’t regularly comment at all but this spun me up. Thanks for the continued football media. I enjoy it all. Happy New Year.