FTA: "Tedd Petruna tells me he was indeed on the flight and, afterward, wrote a long report for the airline about what happened on the flight. He says he’s shocked that AirTran is saying the TSA officials were never there, that the airline has the guts to flat out deny what happened on that flight and in the aftermath. There are plenty of records of his being on the flight and what happened, and he’s considering suing AirTran for lying about it and defaming him. Petruna predicted he’d be attacked for telling the truth about what happened on Flight 297, and he was right. But he told me that he never thought AirTran would lie and claim he wasn’t on the flight."
That is a little more than "just the e-mail."
That wasn’t an FTA quote. That was Debbie Schussel saying that. OK, so that is a “2nd-hand” report.
SO far as I can tell, Tedd has not send a letter directly to any newspaper which has reported the story, and he has not spoken on any talk show, nor has he produced a boarding pass.
So, so far as I know, Tedd has in fact not said ANYTHING, and someone is using his name. I know that is “far-fetched”, I’m just saying there is no direct evidence that Tedd has actually said what is being attributed to him.
And there is a lot of evidence to suggest otherwise, or at least to suggest his story isn’t accurate.
For examples: He says he was in first class, but there was no first class. He said he and a Texan phyiscally handled a passenger — but no passenger has complained about being physically handled, and you’d think if the muslims who were thrown off were looking to make an issue, that would be a perfect issue. Nobody has identified the Texan he says helped him.
He said they were watching porn in the back of the plane. Nobody has confirmed that, and how would he, sitting in the front of the plane, know what was on a 2-inch screen in the back of the plane if nobody else was yelling “it’s porn”?
I put a higher possibility of accuracy on the Chaplain’s story, just because he has published his story directly, although it’s possible that someone else published it under his name. His story has some resemblance to Tedd’s story, but differs on some key points. Of course, the Chaplain wasn’t on the plane, but he notes there were 13 muslims, of which only 11 were allowed back on — Tedd said ALL the muslims were allowed back on, but the Chaplain’s account matches the official story that the two who caused the problem (cell phone use) were NOT allowed back on.
But wouldn’t Tedd, who physically handled the one guy with the cell phone, have noticed that the guy he grabbed was NOT allowed back on? And if so, why did he say they ALL came back on — wouldn’t he have noticed that the guy didn’t sit back down next to him in business class?
Lastly, Tedd said the flight was cancelled. But it wasn’t cancelled, and the newspaper confirmed that the flight continued on — as does the Chaplain.
So it is clear Tedd’s story has some factual mistakes; I have not heard directly from Tedd, and Tedd is just a private citizen.
So while this is all speculation, it seems more reasonable that the airline wouldn’t directly lie about something that would be easily verified by Tedd, if he had a boarding pass and if some other passenger had seen him physically handle another passenger.
IF you were on a plane, don’t you think you’d notice if two white guys grabbed some noisy muslim guy and phyiscally restrained him? But no other passenger account says anything about it.
And BTW, if Tedd really wrote a long report for the airline, what happened to that report? I would have thought it would have been handed to the TSA guys Debbie says Tedd says was there.
But I would also expect Tedd would have put out copies of “the plenty of records of his being on the flight” — why doesn’t Debbie have any images of these records?
I do agree with the statement purportedly made by Tedd that “he never thought Airtran would lie and claim he wasn’t on the flight”. I still feel they wouldn’t.
But if they are, this is an easy thing. He puts out his records showing he was on the flight, and then they can’t show that his connecting flight was late.
But do you really think no newspaper checked the flight records and confirmed that his connecting flight was or wasn’t late? That’s a public record — and that’s how the paper verified that the flight that Tedd said was cancelled actually flew.