Yet another incident aboard Flight 243 from Amsterdam to Detroit.
Sources tell Fox 2 that a flight from Amsterdam into Detroit Metropolitan Airport was held on the tarmac after landing because of unruly behavior by some of the passengers.The source says four men from Saudi Arabia were saying something in Arabic that alarmed four on-board Federal Air Marshals. The Marshals speak Arabic. A decision was made to stop the plane on the tarmac away from the passenger terminal and remove the men from the plane. Once the men were removed, the rest of passengers were then taken to the terminal for deboarding.
The Transportation Security Administration says the unruly passengers were interviewed by Customs and Border Protection officials. But the TSA says the passengers were released and no arrests were made.
Delta Air Lines spokeswoman Susan Elliott says the crew of Northwest Flight 243 requested that authorities meet the plane Tuesday after it landed because four passengers didn’t follow their instructions. She says nobody was injured but wouldn’t describe what the passengers were doing.
The first order of business is to change the flight number. After the attempted Christmas terrorist attack, passengers and crew on subsequent iterations of that flight have been understandably jumpy. But while extra vigilance is good up to a point, the modal result will be to have people freaking out any time a passenger or passengers who “look Muslim” do anything that could be deemed remotely suspicious.
That said, in this case, the fact that it was Federal Air Marshals makes me think there was at least reasonable suspicion that something was awry. It’s almost certainly a case of better safe than sorry.
