Airline Apologizes for Booting Muslim Family from Plane

As Colin Powell said so succinctly:

"Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country?' The answer is 'No. That's not America.' Is there something wrong with some 7-year old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she can be president? Yet I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion he's a Muslim and he might be associated with terrorists. This is not the way we should be doing it in America."

A New Year's Day incident aboard an AirTran domestic flight to Orlando resulted in a family of nine, eight of which were U.S. citizens (the ninth is a permanent U.S. resident) being booted off a flight when two other passengers heard them making what they thought were suspicious remarks about airline security.

The family included three children. The suspicious remark? According to the Washington Post:

Officials said two teenage girls sitting nearby became alarmed when they heard Sahin remark that sitting near the engines would not be safe in the event of an accident or an explosion. The girls told their parents, who told a flight attendant, AirTran officials said.

The Muslim passengers said their innocuous banter was misconstrued.

"The conversation we were having was the conversation anyone would have," Atif Irfan said in a telephone interview from Florida. "She did not use the word 'bomb,' she did not use the word 'explosion.' She said it would not be safe to sit next to the engines in the event of an accident."

The FBI was eventually called and cleared the family, yet AirTran refused to rebook them. AirTran apologized and offered to pay for the family's return flight and replacement tickets. How much of that is due to the threat by Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an advocacy group.

"It is incumbent on any airline to ensure that members of the traveling public are not singled out or mistreated based on their perceived race, religion or national origin. We believe this disturbing incident would never have occurred had the Muslim passengers removed from the plane not been perceived by other travelers and airline personnel as members of the Islamic faith," said the complaint filed with the U.S. Department of Transportation.

This video is from CNN's American Morning, broadcast Jan. 2, 2008.