[Covenantor]

The Beeb has descended to lowestlanguage usage depths. Asian or middle Eastern indeed. While the bulk of Americans might have difficulties in distinguishing between the two, Brits have long had Indians and Pakistanis in their midst from the colonial era and the Brits usually spot them fairly well. So I say odds are they two suspect passengers were from the ME.

And the emergence of an outraged Birmingham MP Khalid Mahmood gives me a dead lock on any bets.

[Canard]

"Asian or middle Eastern indeed. While the bulk of Americans might have difficulties in distinguishing between the two, Brits have long had Indians and Pakistanis in their midst from the colonial era and the Brits usually spot them fairly well. So I say odds are they two suspect passengers were from the ME.

And the emergence of an outraged Birmingham MP Khalid Mahmood gives me a dead lock on any bets."

I'd disagree with you on all points. I'm not convinced that one would expect the passengers to convincingly distinguish between Indian/Pakistani/Middle Eastern origin or indeed between Arabic/Urdu/Hindi. On balance of probabilities, I'd say it was far more likely that the two men described were of Pakistani origin and speaking Urdu, rather than Middle Eastern. And I'm not sure why the contribution of the Birmingham MP gives you more certainty that they were Middle Eastern as he himself is of Pakistani origin.