The bad guys tried to hop a flight from the UK to the US. Didn't work.
they know they're being watched so they try to hop a flight back to safer territory only to have that cancelled.
The good guys have a bead on the bad guys and are trying to make em stay in one place.
Namely...the pilots.
I don't think so -- it'd be easy to check up on all of the pilots and quietly track/remove them.
As I theorized above, I think it's guys in the ground crew setting something up for a passenger to use.
What a pleasant thought!
There should be some FReepers out there that know how to use the web to search for pilot names, eh?