I have a milder but similar story that I too thought was a test. My wife and I were flying home from Orlando in first class. A young muslim couple got on, also in first class, with two boys, and they sat behind us. I thought this a little odd because you don’t normally see a young family like this paying for 4 first class seats.
Everything went normally up to the plane taxiing on the runway out to the takeoff point. About halfway out, the woman muslim rang the call button and told the flight attendant that one of her boys was running a high fever and she wanted to return to the gate. So we did.
Now I thought it odd that she would take the kid’s temperature at that point in time. If the kid was that sick, why did they get on the plane in the first place?
Anyway, they all got off at which point I called the flight attendant and told him that I wanted off unless they took that family’s luggage off too.
He said,” that’s a good idea”, so we waited while they did that. Apparently that might have been the test part. They wanted to see if the bags got removed.
Now I don’t know what the baggage rules are or if my comment was the motivator for the removal, but I didn’t feel comfortable flying with them on board.
Wow, I would think they would automatically remove baggage for people who get off the plane before takeoff.
EXCELLENT PRESENCE OF MIND.
EXCELLENT TAKING ACTION.
CONGRATS FOR BEING SUCH A GREAT EXAMPLE to all of us.
Matching passengers with bags has been going on since the Lockerbie bombing.