Doesn't make such a good story for the press if it was just drunks.

a) I was not on the flight

b) I am crew and I am trained to "recognise" suspect behaviour. The training we go through in my airline is one of the best and most exhaustive in the whole world. Just by what I have read on papers/seen on tv the crew had no right to offload the passengers "just because..."

Prove to me that it was legitimate, that there was a real risk and I will talk no more.

We all know the story of the crying wolf, don't we?

FBW

PS: those two men safely travelled back to Manchester the following day, I am sure they are grateful to that captain who took them back in one piece, and who made them feel safe from aviation hazards and passengers-in-flipflop madness.

That's a difficult one flybywire. The Captains job is to make safe, commercially viable decisions. The safe aspect has to err on the side of caution. That can mean being highly unpopular with the First Officer, the cabin crew, passengers, the airline, the wife, the engineers, ATC, society in general and anyone else you care to name.

I once had to offload a passenger for reasons of pure suspicion. It was reported to me that the man looked like an individual who had caused a disruptive incident a few weeks previously. This was explained to him and he was escorted off the aircraft.

Fortunately we had time to conduct a background check on the individual. It was a case of mistaken identity on the part of some ground staff. We let him back on and he took the situation with well a sense of humour.

This wasn't a nice decision I had to make. However, taking into account all the information available at the time it was the responsible thing to do.

And that is my point. The Captain's job is to be responsible - not popular or politically correct.

Like I said, the wrong time to realise a bad call has been made, is when you are strapped in and airborne !!!

:mad:

HPCock
 

Enough said HPCock - that is the kind of thanks the British receive for allowing your family to settle in their country.

It's not a democracy in my plane. I decide who does and who doesn't fly, not shell suited Sun readers. If they don't want to fly with people who have been through the same security checks as they have, they will be ones getting off.

Quote from my Captains line training many moons ago:

"If it needs to be a dictatorship, it will be"

At the begining and end of the day the Captains authority has to be respected. We cannot allow other agencies and political influences to rule the cockpit.

I couldn't read the full article do you have to be a paid subscriber to read it?

"If my supposition is true then I have even more reasons not to see anything weird at all in taking a day trip."

Isn't is fairly common for people to fly to AGP with empty suitcases, stock up on cheap ciggies, and return home later that day? Plenty of locos with enough frequency to make that possible, including ZB, who claim over 50% market share on the MAN-AGP route.

Just wondering how the comment about the last 30 minutes was picked up if they were supposed to be speaking in Arabic (or another language which wasn't English, and presumably wasn't spoken by many others on the flight).

From the reports which have filtered through, it sounds like they might have been messing around a fair bit, perhaps speaking bits in English, bits in the other language. They certainly seem to have provoked a response, but perhaps we've all jumped to conclusions very quickly without really having the full facts. However, if it is true that they were drinking, will the Muslim leaders who have so far condemned the actions of the airline have a few words to say about the evils of their flock consuming liquour?

not racisim
 

Monarch may not have done the right thing by everyone's eye's but they did do it right by mine. Offload 2 pax or offload the other 226, you do the math. Most of the people on this page are flight deck so you all know the time, delay and all the jazz. Monarch had another case prior to this that many people dont know about.

06/06/06 MBA LGW, 6 muslim men were off loaded by the crew after pax informed us of their behaviour. All 6 checked in together, then when they got to the gate sat away from each other and all started convo's on there phns in arabic and when they got on the a/c the were dotted about the cabin, not one sitting together and not one complaint about that fact.

When they were offloaded, not a word from them. If you were getting offloaded I am quite sure you would have something to say. And it turned out that one passport was a fake one ticket was a fake and three of them had libyian passports.

I hope we all can agree that there were too many negatives to letting them fly!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This may have been in the minds of all the crew when off loading the 2 men in agp. Monarch are a very security concious airline, we have dft checks coming out gleeming with praise for us and we wont let our ground staff and passport control etc try and get us in trouble. Everyone on board our aircraft know what they are doing and some times you have to go with your gut instinct.