Posted on 12/05/2009 7:53:36 AM PST by Irisshlass
An airline is fending off charges fueled by a widely circulated e-mail that an incident on a flight from Atlanta to Houston, reported by news media as minor, actually bore the marks of a "dry run" by Muslim terrorists.
The e-mail account of a purported passenger on AirTran Flight 297 on Nov. 17, bolstered by a separate investigation by Northeast Intelligence Network, contends that about a dozen Muslim men in "full attire" who were spread throughout the jet as it taxied to the runway caused a disturbance prompting pilots to return to the gate and bring law enforcement officers onboard.
The airline, at its InsideAirTran website, denied many of the claims made in the e-mail, which purportedly was written by a passenger, Tedd Petruna of Houston, and circulated by a friend, A. Gene Hackemack. Neither Petruna nor Hackemack responded immediately to WND requests for commentAfter first rebutting Petruna's written account point by point, AirTran later posted on its site a denial that the e-mailer was even on the flight, writing: "After conducting additional research into this situation, we have verified, according to flight manifests (legally binding documents) that the individual that allegedly created a first-hand account of events on-board AirTran Airways flight 297, a Theodore Petruna, was never actually on-board the flight."
Yet questions remain, such as why was the flight crew was changed after a supposedly minor disturbance and why several passengers were so distraught that they refused to continue on to their destination after the men involved were allowed to reboard the airplane.
Now, KHOU in Houston reports the Federal Aviation Administration has begun investigating.
(Excerpt) Read more at wnd.com ...
"The reasons, I have been told, is fear of predatory lawsuits, negative publicity from accusations of religious profiling, and the obligatory subjugation to mindless mandatory Muslim sensitivity training that make a mockery of our American system of values," Hagmann writes.
He said an airline official told him "we don't want to become another flight 300," referring to a similar scenario on a US Airways flight three years ago.
This didn’t happen.
Wouldn’t “full attire” require a suicide belt and AK-47?
Causing a minor disturbance is a possible attempt to get the air marshalls to self-identify.
If there are any.
Flight attendents were sobbing openly...Robinson was warned not to get on board by another passenger...the orginal crew refused to fly the airplane over a cell phone incident??? A dozen or more passengers left the airplane and rebooked their flight? It did happen.
If it was posted on April 1, everyone would have recognized it as a bad April Fools Joke immediately.
I wouldn’t doubt that Ted Petruna is a pseudonym, but that the account is substantially real.
I know what AJC says..if you read this story you would understand why it is being posted.
Quite right.
Who says so. What person, one who can be easily identified as a real person on the flight, says, "Yes, I saw this happen."
This is all rumor packed on top of anonymous e-mails packed on top of rumor.
I'm sorry but this does not pass the smell test. It's about an 8.5 on the BS meter.
http://www.gillreport.com/index.php Podcast
Steve Gill - December 3, 2009 Hr 3
LIVE from the Opryland Hotel and Convention Center; D
The guy is real.
Nope, he works at NASA down in South Houston. He’s real.
PS, back in my Crusading TV Reporter days, we would get about 3 stories a week that were this bad... and all BS.
Dr. Keith Robinson says so..He also did a 45 min interview. Do your own homework.
Hmmmm...interesting you call it Crusade..
Yes, and you are allowing that experience to color your view of this one. Nope, its real. Ask a pilot or anyone connected to AirTran. It wasn’t a dry run though, it was an attempt to get a payoff.
This from new AJC posting
"Although AirTran previously had declined to release the flight manifest, that changed Friday evening. In addition to discounting Petruna's story, the airline responded to the amount of attention it believed the circulated e-mail was gaining, said Christopher White, AirTran spokesman.
There was no way Petruna could have seen what he described on Flight 297, AirTran said in a statement. Petruna departed from Akron-Canton, Ohio, on AirTran Flight 205 on Nov. 17, officials said. He was supposed to connect to Flight 297 to head to Houston, but he missed his first flight out of Ohio. And therefore, he missed the connecting flight.
"Flight 297, the flight which Mr. Patruna allegedly wrote a first-hand account of, originally pushed back from its gate in Atlanta at 4:40 p.m. EST, a full 26 minutes before flight 205 arrived at the gate in Atlanta making this flight connection impossible," according to AirTran.
Neither Petruna nor Hackemack responded to requests from the AJC to speak to them Friday evening.
end of AJC story
How can he start a rumor..when you have “other” witnesses.
Doug Hagman interviewed 7 other witnesses which included two law enforcement officers who handled the after action reports.
“According to one airline security official, “This was a deliberate, well planned attempt to disrupt a domestic flight that was organized in advance of the boarding of these [Muslim] passengers. The purpose of their actions appeared to be multi-faceted, not the least of which was an attempt to change their status from passengers to victims of religious profiling”
Petruna was in midair when they incident took place. But you have 7 other witnesses which includes law enforcement. And the orginal crew refused to fly the plane.
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