Nov. 18--A leading Muslim group is calling on Spirit Airlines to apologize after four people were removed from a Chicago-bound flight in Baltimore when a woman complained about a man, possibly of Middle Eastern descent, who was watching a news report on his phone.
The four were later released without any charges, but they missed their flight from Baltimore Washington International Airport to O'Hare International Airport on Tuesday.
"Watching news on your smartphone has never qualified as a security threat or as suspicious behavior and could have been easily vetted as such with minimal inquiry by the flight crew," the Council on American Islamic Relations said in a statement.
"That this was escalated into an ordeal seems to be exclusively due to the passenger's perceived ethnicity," it added.
Spirit Airlines did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.
Spirit Airlines Flight 969 was about to take off early Tuesday morning when a woman reported the "suspicious behavior" of a man next to her who was watching news on his phone, according to Sgt. Jonathan Green, a spokesman for the Maryland Transportation Authority, which patrols the airport.
As the plane was taxiing toward the runway, she grabbed her young daughter and rushed to the back of the plane and talked to a flight attendant, Green said.
The captain decided to return to the gate and the man and two others in his row, another man and a woman, were removed, along with a man sitting behind them, Green said.
Four to five other people were removed temporarily as well, according to several passengers, but they apparently were allowed to continue on the flight, which didn't leave Baltimore until three hours later. The four passengers who originally were taken off the plane were all released with no charges by about noon. said.
"We did not find any criminal activity or violations of any kind and they were free to do what they pleased at that point," Green said. "One of the three males was sitting next to a female passenger and apparently he was watching a media report. I don't know of what nature it was, but given current events, I can imagine what it was.
"I'm not going to discredit the captain," Green said. "He had the information there at the time and he made a decision based on the information. Our job is to respond to his request to remove the four individuals, and we took them to the station, interviewed all four of them, and we felt there was no indication of any criminal activity or violations."
Green would not comment Tuesday on the ethnicity of the passengers removed, but CAIR said their "perceived ethnicity" appears to have played into what happened.
"The threshold for 'see something, say something' is meant to apply to suspicious behavior, not personal prejudices against minorities engaging in non-suspicious behavior," said CAIR-Chicago Executive Director Ahmed Rehab.
"Americans of all faiths and ethnicities should be able to travel freely without being harassed or subjected to unconstitutional racial or religious profiling," he said. "These passengers were inconvenienced and forced to endure humiliating treatment and invasive questioning for no apparent substantial reason other than because their perceived ethnicity caused alarm in a fellow passenger.
"We call on Spirit Airlines to issue a public apology to all four passengers and take steps to ensure this does not happen again," Rehab said.
