WhatFinger


"Security concerns"? Really?

What’s with this weird in-flight incident over the film ‘Alex Cross’?



You have to keep in mind that this is an account from the passengers themselves, provided to The Atlantic and then later recounted by Fox News, but it sounds plausible enough in an age of heightened security awareness but little common sense in the application of said awareness.
I'll summarize before quoting part of the passenger's missive. A couple was flying United Airlines with two young children, ages 8 and 4, when the in-flight movie began. It was Alex Cross, which has a lot of violence and sexual content. The couple asked if the screen could be folded up so their kids couldn't see it as it was clearly inappropriate for them to be watching. The flight attendants and the purser claimed this was impossible, and then added they wouldn't do it if they could because it would prevent the passengers behind them from seeing the movie. The passengers behind them then piped up that they agreed with the couple, and that folding up the screen would be just fine with them. But the crew still refused. Undaunted, the passengers asked for the name of the pilot and wanted to know if he had the authority to address the situation. Here's what happened next, again, according to the passengers:

Support Canada Free Press


More than an hour later the captain, [name withheld for now], announced that due to "security concerns", our flight was being diverted to Chicago's ORD. Although this sounded ominous, all passengers, us included, were calm. After landing a Chicago police officer boarded the plane and, to our disbelief, approached us and asked that we collect our belongings, and follow her to disembark. The captain, apparently, felt that our complaint constituted grave danger to the aircraft, crew and the other passengers, and that this danger justified inconveniencing his crew, a few of whom "timed out" during the diversion, and a full plane of your customers, causing dozens of them to miss their connections, wasting time, precious jet fuel, and adding to United's carbon footprint. Not to mention unnecessarily involving several of Chicago's finest, two Border Protection officers and several United and ORD managers, and an FBI agent, who all met us at the gate. After we were interviewed (for less than 5 minutes), our identities and backgrounds checked, we were booked on the next flight to BWI, and had to linger in the terminal for hours with our exhausted and terrified little boys. Everyone involved: The FBI agent, the police officers, United employees, the passengers around us and (we were told) some of the crew, were incredulous, and explicit in their condemnation of Captain [XX]'s actions. However, even United's Area Supervisor, although cordial and helpful, was powerless to override the Captain's decision that we be removed from the plane.
Thoughts on this? It sounds like the general attitude of the crew was dismissive and disrespectful toward the couple. I don't know that you can connect this to a larger societal attitude about the concerns of parents and what their children are seeing. It sounds like a lot of the people involved were sympathetic to their plight, but the pilot had the authority to make the call. Really, though: A security concern? Because they complained about a movie? Either there is more to this story or somebody really overreacted to a lot of nothing. I have had to fly quite a bit over the past 18 months, and while I do detect an air of arrogance within the airline industry toward its customers, I find individuals for the most part to be pretty nice and customer friendly. It seems to me this might be a case of a policy -- perhaps written too broadly -- applied in a way that pushed the letter of the law at the expense of common sense. One thing I would bet you, though: If the passengers in question were Middle Eastern, this story would have received a lot more play in the media, and the angle would have been a lot more sympathetic to the passengers with the emphasis on racial profiling and such. Too bad this family (and the other passengers) had to go through this. Supposedly United Airlines is now reviewing its choice of in-flight movies. Does no one work there who knows better than to show sexual content in an industry where you will almost certainly have minor children on board? Or is that sort of family-friendly thinking simply too quaint and outdated for today's modern sensibilities?


View Comments

Dan Calabrese -- Bio and Archives

Dan Calabrese’s column is distributed by HermanCain.com, which can be found at HermanCain

Follow all of Dan’s work, including his series of Christian spiritual warfare novels, by liking his page on Facebook.


Sponsored