AirTran Apologizes to Muslim Passengers

Jan. 2, 2008— -- The airline AirTran is apologizing to nine Muslim passengers ordered off a flight Thursday by federal air marshals at the request of the pilot because of their overheard conversation about the safest place to sit on the plane.

"We generally like to sit in the middle of the plane because I've been told it's the safest place to sit," said Atif Irfan, an attorney who was detained onboard AirTran Flight 175 from Washington, D.C., to Orlando, Fla., on New Year's Day.

"Then, my sister-in-law had mentioned maybe that it's the back of the plane," he added. "So we were discussing basically where the safest place in to sit in an airplane is."

But that's not the conversation another passenger sitting behind Irfan and his family reported hearing. A worried teenage girl on board contacted a flight attendant, saying that she heard talk of the plane blowing up or going down.

The pilot contacted Transportation Security Administration, had the family removed, and then ordered all passengers off the aircraft for re-screening.

The incident has sparked a debate over whether officials were exercising appropriate caution or unfairly profiling passengers.

"I mean, we're not going to stand there on the airplane and say, oh, you know, 'bomb this,' 'terrorist that,' 'threat this.' I mean we're smarter than that," Irfan said. "So I think that, to a certain extent, people listen to whatever words we have [and] unfortunately hear what they want to hear a lot of times."

Irfan said fellow passengers jumped to conclusions because of the color of his skin and his wife's traditional Muslim headscarf -- a case of discrimination.

"We did feel like we were being singled out, not because of what we had said or some members had said," said Kashir Irfan, a detained flyer, "but rather the fact we looked a certain way and we wore certain pieces of clothing."

"We had to stand there like we were criminals," said Inayet Shahin, another detained flyer. "We had three little kids, and I just feel like seeing that scene you could tell that there was a lot of discrimination going on."