Unfortunately, Southwest has staff who are barbarians who enjoy mistreating customers. I know this from personal experience.
Only a lawsuit will change Southwestâs criminally negligent management.
Good luck with thatâŚ
In the terminal he said the man, accompanied by three police officers, told him he should have known better than to speak in Arabic on an airplane, given how it might rattle people these days.
Yes, because the 1st Amendment only covers speech in English.
I wonder, based on security concerns and the potential for resulting conflict among passengers, would the airline remove a passenger for talking loudly about the pressing need to elect Donald Trump President? If Khairuldeen Makhzoomi had registered a complaint with the pilot about such a passenger would ejection of the boisterous Trump supporter have resulted?President Trump will have the TSA install waterboarding room at airports.
Not sure what to make of this article, but it may suggest another wrinkle in the storyâŚ
âArabic-Speaking Student Kicked Off Flight: âThey Made Me Feel As If I Were Guiltyââ
And this ladies and gentlemen, is how we create terrorists. Make them feel alienated and like they are not wanted and you will create someone who might as well act like you are treating them.
Its a ghastly airline. They donât reserve seats and the planes are dirty. I flew it once from Florida to California and Iâd walk before I flew that shit hole of an airline again.
Exactly, it was a person who spoke Arabic that reported him, and even the guy himself admitted he was referencing a terrorist group during his conversation. Thatâs just stupid. OR, it was âbaitâ, and now he gets a lot of attention.
From the article:
One new detail revealed in the statement is that the woman who overheard Makhzoomiâs comments, which came during a phone conversation with his uncle, also spoke Arabic.âIt was the content of the passengerâs conversation, not the language used, that prompted the report leading to our investigation,â Southwest said in its statement. âOnce the report was made, an Arabic-speaking Southwest Manager at LAX participated in the decision to request the passenger leave the aircraft and continue the conversation in the gate area.â
And as usual the free speech nuts commenting. Well, he was not arrested, so itâs not a free speech issue.
If there are some black passengers on the plane, and some white asshole starts talking about the KKK on his telephone, he can no doubt be perceived as a threat and removed.
And again âwhat were perceived to be threatening remarksâ but mention of what was actually said. The Copâs say no threat was made. What did he say that another passenger could justify as threatening? I suspect the absence of quotes speak loud enough. The guy didnât say shit.
The report doesnât tell us what this threatening language was.
Southwest used to be one of my favorite airlines. Used to be.
Shouldnât be a problem. Iâm sure the NSA has a recording of the phone conversation. Once they make it public, weâll all know what we canât say on an airplane.
I speak a little bit of French, but that doesnât mean that I could tell whether someone speaking French during a phone conversation was a terrorist.
So once you guys and gals at Southwest determined this man did nothing to warrant an arrest (or anything), you canât be gracious, sincerely apologize and offer him the next flight to his destination? Instead, you refund his original ticket price and tell him to find other means to get home (in other words: go fuck yourself)? Seriously? He did nothing wrong â nothing â and he gets pulled off the plane and told to find another way home. Great advertising, SW. Iâll remember this.
Well if the person spoke Arabic, they should have known the context that led him to include a reference to Islamic State. Assuming heâs telling the truth that he was only referring to a question from the previous nightâs event, a person who understood what he was saying shouldnât have been alarmed. The police also concluded there were no threats involved, and didnât seem to have any qualms about letting him go, so I donât think the argument that he really did something to deserve being kicked off the flight holds much water.
You also have the Southwest employee saying he should have known better than to speak Arabic on a plane, so even if there was ultimately a legitimate reason for removing him based on his full comments, I donât think it can be denied that Islamophobia played a role as well. Again, assuming the reporting is accurate. I also donât get why they couldnât put him on another Southwest flight once he was cleared, he had to take a Delta flight instead. Maybe it was a two-way street and he didnât really want to fly with them (which when it comes to Southwest is understandable even without the incident), but if they kicked him off the flight out of an abundance of caution, they should have had no problem accommodating him once the issue was cleared up.
So strange. Last time I went through security at JFK - last spring - I went through behind a Saudi and I was the one jerked out of line and hand searched - he wasnât. 
Inshallah he didnât have a homemade clock with him.
He probably said, and Iâm guess-quoting: â[stuff in Arabic] ISIS [stuff in Arabic].â
Which of course translates to âmwahahahahahaha die infidels, in the name of ISIS I shall martyr myself bathed in your bloodâ once you run it through the Teatroll Rosetta Stone. Cue shitshowâŚ
Of course, Iâm a near-translucent-white Irish dude, and I would never say out loud on a plane full of people any terrorist organizationâs name for fear of an overreaction, so thereâs that element of this too. Clearly, this kid just doesnât know who heâs dealing with when it comes to the Amurikkkan public yet.
People should just not be allowed to talk on their phones in the plane anyway. Itâs annoying and rude in a small confined space and the people doing it are usually loud and could care less about disturbing others.
Southwest has a reputation for kicking people off flights for the vaguest of reasons. Film Director Kevin Smith got kicked off a Southwest flight once for being too fat.