Do you wear the right T-shirt to board a plane?
Mr Jarrar, a US resident, was waiting to board a flight at New York's JFK airport wearing a T-shirt that read "We Will Not Be Silent" in English and Arabic.
The airline, JetBlue, ordered him to remove his T-shirt saying other passengers felt uncomfortable with the Arabic slogan.
He eventually agreed to cover the shirt and boarded the plane, but he was made to sit at the back of the plane.
He went to court. The Transport Security Authority and JetBlue airlines agreed to settle the case, paying out a total of $240,000 in compensation.
This is not an isolated incident. Last week, a Muslim family was ordered off a domestic US flight operated by AirTran airlines after passengers claimed they were making suspicious remarks about security.
The family members were later cleared by the FBI, but were not permitted to fly with the airline to continue their journey. (Full)
Peter. Flemish, European, aid worker, expeditioner, sailor, traveller, husband, father, friend, nutcase. Not necessarily in that order.
2 comments:
Peter
Don't know whether you remembered the Iraqi blogger Salam Pax who came to the attention of the west when his blog " where is Raed" became popular in 2003 after the coalition went to look for WMD :( in Iraq.
Raed is Read Jarrar the fellow who was asked to remove that T-Shirt. They didn't know with whom they were "messing" :-)
@The Beaver:
Really?? I will look it up, and try to write a post about this...
Haha.. I can see the headline already 'Iraqi blogger takes on the TSA'
Peter
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