Danger. Rant...
A few first-blush observations…
1. When the husband gets up to speak to a FA, the FA pulls him into the galley and, among other things, tells him that, “…the flight attendants were passing notes to each other.” Then, 30 minutes later the FA comes to the husband… “Leaning over and whispering, she asked my husband to write a description of the yellow-shirted man sitting across from us. She explained it would look too suspicious if she wrote the information. She asked my husband to slip the note to her when he was done.”
----So, the FAs are not having any trouble writing notes to each other, but when it comes to writing down a description of a particular individual, it would look suspicious? FAs write stuff all the time for crying out loud, and if they want to do so privately, can do it behind a curtain in a galley or in a lav. Finally, the guy is sitting right across the aisle! Leaning in and whispering isn’t suspicious? Please..
2. “Approximately 10 minutes later, that same flight attendant came by with the drinks cart. She leaned over and quietly told my husband there were federal air marshals sitting all around us. She asked him not to tell anyone and explained that she could be in trouble for giving out that information. She then continued serving drinks.”
----Puts me in mind of Otto lying to Wendy when she catches him talking to Archie in “A Fish Called Wanda…” Dimwitted Otto makes up a story on the spot and claims that he works for the CIA and is just going around the neighborhood to let the public know that the CIA is debriefing KGB defectors in a nearby safe house. Wendy, seeing the utter nonsense in the CIA’s telling all of the neighbors about a secret safe house, challenges him on it, and Otto responds…
***
Otto: Look, you obviously don't know anything about intelligence work, lady. It's an X-K-Red-27 technique.
Wendy: My father was in the Secret Service, Mr. Manfredjinsinjin, and I know perfectly well that you don't keep the general public informed when you are "debriefing KGB defectors in a safe house."
Otto: Oh, you don't, huh?
Wendy: Not unless you're congenitally insane or irretrievably stupid, no.
***
In much the same way, it would be irretrievably stupid to even begin to indicate locations of any FAMs to the pax.
3. “Right in front of us, two men stood up against the emergency exit door, waiting for the lavatory to become available. The men spoke in Arabic among themselves and to the man in the yellow shirt sitting nearby.” OK. Fine. But just a few minutes later, “The last man came out of the bathroom, and as he passed the man in the yellow shirt he ran his forefinger across his neck and mouthed the word ‘No.’”
----No? In English? I’m not an Arabic speaker, but I’d think that he would have mouthed the word, “la.” How about another angle? Did the young man get in trouble with the FA for being up and mouth the word “nahono” as in “we” and drew his finger across his neck signifying that the FA verbally “killed” the guys for being up when the seat belt sign was on? Look, I’m not saying that this is what happened. Only curious about other possibilities, assuming the story is even remotely accurate. (And again, I'm not an Arabic speaker and I'm not equipped to get into a discussion of verb conjugation, etc)
4. “We gave sworn statement after sworn statement.”
----Nonsense. Multiple sworn statements in one sitting does not fit well with reality.
5. “So here's my question: Since the FBI issued a warning to the airline industry to be wary of groups of five men on a plane who might be trying to build bombs in the bathroom, shouldn't a group of 14 Middle Eastern men be screened before boarding a flight?”
----Yup. You can bet your bottom dollar they should be screened, and that they WERE screened. This is the stuff that really gets my goat. All pax are screened (in general terms. Let’s not pick nits here). End of story.
--She goes on, “No one checked the passports of the Syrian men. No one inspected the contents of the two instrument cases or the McDonald's bag. And no one checked the limping man's orthopedic shoe. In fact, according to the TSA regulations, passengers wearing an orthopedic shoe won't be asked to take it off. As their site states, ‘Advise the screener if you're wearing orthopedic shoes…screeners should not be asking you to remove your orthopedic shoes at any time during the screening process.’”
----Again, nonsense. This woman and her family stayed on the air side in DTW. They did not get anywhere near security. How, in the name of all things holy would she have been able to tell whether these guys were adequately screened? She had no idea whether these gentlemen had started their trip at DTW or were, like her and her family, changing planes there. She knew (or should have known) that they had been subjected to security screening the first time they entered the air side, but for some reason concentrates only on the fact that the gate agent didn’t do a strip search on them. Further, she cites only enough of the TSA orthopedic policy to make her point. Truth is, the policy info that she quotes from says that “…screeners will need to see and touch your prosthetic device…as part of the screening process… A screening supervisor or a lead screener will need to perform an explosive trace detection (ETD) screening of your prosthetic device…” So, if this guy DID have a prosthetic device, it probably got closer scrutiny than any of HER carry-on baggage. Although they would not have made him take it off during screening, they WOULD have run an ETD on it. If the ETD would have shown traces of explosives, well, THEN he’d have been made to take it off…
6. I’ve ranted too long already, so allow me to add just one thing… Much as I love NWA, I have to say that in all my travels, among all the carriers I fly, the NWA FAs appear to be the least likely to manage pax when the seat belt sign is on. I’ve often wondered whether this was some sort of company policy (the logical evolution of the “all we can do is ask them to sit down” line of thought). Perhaps this less-than-aggressive approach reinforced any idea this author had (and nope, I'm not saying that NWA FAs let pax stand during landing. Just wondering whether a predisposition regarding these guys was kicked up a notch by a lax seat belt policy...).
Sure, there’s more, but that’s enough for now.
Dave