Well, After All, They Are Virgins and Clearly Advertise That. They Don’t Say How Many Virgins, Though.
Bobby Abtahi, a Dallas attorney who is also the vice-chair of the City Plan Commission, got his butt thrown off a Virgin Airlines flight because the captain and crew didn’t feel comfortable with him on the flight.
He’s Iranian. Oh crap, face it, he’s brown.
Abtahi said that he was boarding a flight from New York’s La Guardia to Dallas when a gate agent pulled him aside and said the crew did not feel comfortable having him on the flight. When he asked why, the gate agent said it was the captain’s decision and went to speak with him.
When she returned, she told him he wouldn’t be allowed on the flight because he had walked in front of a flight attendant walking in the terminal doors, Abtahi said.
Abtahi says that he did have a five day beard because he’d been on vacation on a beach. But to assume that everyone who walks in front of a flight attendant gets thrown off a flight is a tad – just a tad – unfreekinbelieveable.
He got a flight with American Airlines without a problem.
Virgin Airlines has apologized and called it “a misunderstanding.” They gave him his money back and some free flights, you know, that he can get thrown off of in the future.
Thanks to Another Susan for the heads up.
When my black-haired husband started growing a beard, a coworker of his said, “If I worked at an airport gate and saw you coming, I would just open fire,” and he’s not even brown (though he is 6’5″), and that was in 1988.
He’s had no trouble since, so maybe even brown people have to be either smooth-shaven or fully bearded to… no, I don’t think the latter would help either….
I guess it’s just scaredy bigots who are the real problem.
1Gee … does anyone think if Piyush Jindal is ever denied a flight he might leave the snacilbupeR party and become a progressive?
2Oh wow. This is the environment we’re creating…
3I wonder if they would have felt uncomfortable if he had looked like an anti-abortion terrorist?
4It is a total embarrassment!!
5OMG! He forgot the Don’t-walk-in-front-of-flight-attendants Rule! Well… what do you expect will happen after an infraction as serious as that?!
Just imagine what could happen if he forgot the Don’t-ask-for-directions-to-the-men’s-room Rule? Desperate times call for desperate measures, eh?
6This cartoon:
http://www.gocomics.com/jen-sorensen/2015/12/01
7Oh, snap! Does that mean the flight attendant was royalty?
8When my Irish/German background husband and I honeymooned in Harlingen in 1976, he had grown a beard and was dark from younger years working in the oil fields in the sun all the time. Customs detained him at the air port and we had to take a later flight. I was really afraid !
9As it happens, Mr. Abtahi is my Planning Commissioner for the District in which I live. He is one of the nicest people I have met. Hard to believe the idiotic things that fearful people will do. This has gone past fear and turned into an outright nationwide panic attack underlaid by hysteria. Since I am not one of the fearful ones, I find that I have to be careful not to set off the fright in others. A whole lot of people are living in a perpetual house of horrors.
My husband and I were headed north from spending Christmas with my mother in McAllen in the early-mid ’70s when we were pulled over and Border Patrol wanted to search our car. We were both dark-haired and fairly tan, my husband had a trimmed but full beard and short hair; I had long hair in a braid. We said sure.
On top of the car we had a pink and red single-seat Folbot we’d built. In the truck were the innards of a 2-seater Folbot (lots and lots and lots of aluminum tubing and shock cord, but also the wood bits–the keel folded in 3 pieces–and the seats. And the folded up skin, red and blue. I don’t remember if we’d also brought along the sail kit, probably not because what we had filled the old Rambler’s trunk as it was.
So the officer looked in the trunk, and faced with this mass of obviously complicated stuff said “WHat in the world is that?” and one of us said “It’s a two-seater Folbot. We built the one on top of the car in our apartment; this one really folded up.”
“What were you doing with it?”
“We took them down to Padre and paddled them in the surf.”
“How long would it take you to get that out of there so we could look at it?”
“Oh–probably a half hour. You have to be careful or the pieces get all tangled up and then it takes much longer…we can do it, it just takes awhile. Putting it back in takes longer because the keel only fits in one way…”
But we were cheerful, not nervous, and clearly not drunk or on anything, so one of them heaved a big sigh and said “Let them go.”
We weren’t brown enough to be in serious trouble as long as we weren’t drug mules.
10So a brown person walking in front of a flight attendant sets off the same superstitious fear reaction as would a black cat?
11Not all my children and grandchildren inherited my melanin challenged genetics. This incident does not make me happy.
12So is Abtahi rethinking his political afilliation, assuming he’s republican?
13KatyAnders-ever watch Genesis-Land of Confusion video?
https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=land+of+confusion+genesis
This ‘splains wingnuts to a fare thee well.
14I love the stories.
15So, how many paces behind the flight attendant is permissible while entering airports in Amerika?
16I wasn’t aware that walking in front of a flight attendant was a criminal act now? is this only in the airport, or outside of it as well? what’s the penalty for violating it, aside from being extra-judicially not allowed on the plane?
these “misunderstandings” seem to be happening with greater frequency on US based airlines of late. if these pilots are running that scared, perhaps they shouldn’t be piloting a huge plane, with hundreds of passengers on board, the fear must be killing them, and certainly affecting their judgment in-flight.
17maryelle, he’s a Democrat. And he gave the free tickets on Virgin to the Human Rights Institute of North Texas.
18Um, lotsa pilots are retired Air Force. And it’s not much talked about (yet?) but the Air Force Academy and upper brass is crawling with wild eyed Evangelical Christians, all wearing the same haircut and spouting the same rhetoric. Justice Dept is working on doing something about it, but it’s amazingly entrenched, and the brass do their best to kick uncooperative (non convert) types out, ASAP. So expect this BS to happen more frequently-this is not going to be an isolated incident, I’m afraid!
19Can some of you folks from CO attest to this as well?