A phonecall??? Sorry... he needed to get his sorry @ss off the plane and leave the rest of the passengers alone to go on about their way.
A phonecall is not a right. Hell, it only became ~possible~ a few years ago. That doesn’t make it more important than the rest of the flight.
It seems the silly people on the rest of the fight were the REAL problem.
I was kind of sympathetic to you before, but not after this comment. The other passengers saw a bag with a bagel in it, so he has no right to be on the plane. I can't believe how many "Citizens are the property of the government" types there are on FR.
Next time you are on a plane, imagine if police come up to you and treat you like bin Laden. I'm sure you would love it.
It's a gray area. Flight crew are not sworn peace officers, so they don't automatically have the power to search someone.
Unless federal law expressly gives them that power, it's not automatic because they happen to be in/on the property of the airline. However, it's in the contract of carriage:
http://www.usairways.com/en-UK/travel_information/customers_first/carriage2.html
See item 3 under section 3.1. Note that this is the UK contract, but the US version is in a PDF and I was having trouble getting it to load.
An example in another context: a store doesn't have the automatically have the right to search a person accused of shoplifting. They can detain you on suspicion of theft, but if you demand it, they must call the police to actually search you. And if the police don't find anything amiss, you can file charges against the store personnel for unlawful restraint.
[Note that this is based on Texas law. Your mileage may vary elsewhere]
We don't know what led up to this incident. It sounds like there was plenty of over-reacting on all sides. If it had been a elderly white grandmother, no one would have paid a bit of attention.