WASHINGTON — I heard the story at just the right time. I was fresh off a Southwest Airlines flight from Raleigh-Durham, and I was still annoyed. The security people at the airport had confiscated my cigar cutter.
Well, they didn’t really confiscate it; they told me my options were to throw it away or go to the ticket counter (where the line was 35-40 minutes long) and check it. That’s right, they would actually check this three-inch plastic gizmo (think of a guillotine for a medium-size cockroach) and let me retrieve it when we landed at Baltimore/Washington International Airport. But it was too dangerous to allow in the passenger compartment.
I threw it away, of course, but I was still smarting at the silliness in the name of security that is stretching airport lines (and passenger patience) without, as far as I could see, making flying that much safer. I mean, I could have done more damage with a broken lens from my eyeglasses than with that benign cigar cutter.
Then I talked to Eric Newton of the Knight Foundation in Miami.
Newton was a passenger on a recent U.S. Airways flight from Washington Dulles International to Philadelphia. The plane left the gate only to return a few minutes later. A sick crew member, the announcement from the cockpit said. Then, according to Newton:
"We went back to the gate. Two security guys got on and walked to the back of the plane. Two young Arabic-looking men and an Arabic-looking woman were quietly escorted off the plane. The pilot announced that some people wanted to leave."
The plane was quickly abuzz, Newton reports. A passenger asked a flight attendant if the "sick crew member" was OK. No one was sick, the attendant admitted. It was just a ruse to get back to the gate. And the people who wanted to leave? Well, they didn’t really want to leave. Then what? Here is Newton’s account:
"She (the attendant) said the two men had ‘icy stares’ and wouldn’t make eye contact with her and that she became so frightened she was ‘shaking all over.’ She reported her concerns to the pilot, who told her it was her call, and she said she decided the men should not be on the plane, that she did not feel safe. She took the names of some of the passengers who agreed that the three ejectees ‘looked strange.’ "
That was it. A few passengers wondered if the three who had been removed still had luggage on the plane, said Newton, but no one objected to their removal.
Newton wishes now that he had. He understands, he told me, that there is a kind of "freak out" rule in force. Any crew member who is freaked out by the appearance or behavior of a passenger doesn’t have to make the trip. Either the crew member is replaced, or the passenger is removed. Captain’s call.
Question: Would the flight attendant have been freaked out by an ‘icy stare’ from a business-suited white man? By the refusal of a Chinese-looking woman to make eye contact?
A Duke University senior, Abdullah Al-Arian, has described how low the freak-out threshold can sometimes be.
In an article written for the Duke Chronicle, Abdullah noted that on his first plane trip since the recently tightened security, he was particularly alert to the reaction to his presence.
"I felt the many eyes in the room follow me all the way to the ticket counter. It was the feeling of someone on stage and not knowing his lines. I searched for a behavior type that would ease the tension and alleviate their worries, but could not manage more than a nervous smile. I avoided eye contact, but wait, I told myself, that is suspicious behavior. Look at them. No, don’t stare; that’s even worse."
Only a couple of people actually said anything, including the man who said, in Abdullah’s earshot, that someone "should get him out of here."
Things eventually settled down, after Abdullah opened a conversation, in flawless English, with a young white woman. Abdullah himself won’t fault his fellow passengers for their reactions, and he harbors, he said, more empathy than real anger. He feels good about that.
Eric Newton didn’t do anything, but he might the next time something similar happens in his presence. He feels guilty, but he also feels good about his newly heightened sensitivity.
My loss of a new cigar cutter has shrunk to its proper scale — which is to say to nothing — and I feel good about that.
I wonder if those three Philly-bound passengers at Dulles have anything to feel good about.
William Raspberry can be reached at The Washington Post Writers Group, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, DC 20071-9200 or willrasp@washpost.com.
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