Why did he ask for Terroist Pictures if he didn't suspect this was a Terroist. If he suspected he was a Terroist why didn't he call the FBI or Airport Security. The last thing you want to do is comfront an armed terroist.
Actually, the last thing you want is to be at 36,000 feet with an armed terrorist. It could very well be the last thing you ever do.
I have been reading the replies on this thread and the ones supporting the SS agent fall into several categories:
The pilot should have done more checking before denying the agent a seat. My response is: the pilot has a job to do, fly the plane safely from point A to point B without falling out of the sky. He is also aware that people (exclusively of Arab descent) have made it their goal in life to crash planes into large buildings. On 9/11 they took over planes with box cutters (totally unexpected). The next time they may do it by impersonating a person entitled to carry a gun aboard an aircraft. The pilot does not have all day to try to figure out who this person is. Any phone number provided by the “SS agent” could be a phony leading to an accomplice. So, in between getting clearance for his flight and doing a pre-take off check, he consults with the airline ops center. Not getting any firm confirmation of the SS agent’s identity, he decides not to roll the dice with his planeload of passengers and asks the agent to deplane. The agent is finally able to get his identity confirmed and catches a later flight.
That could be the end of the story, except we now have a “multicultural’ hypersensitivity where if our feeling get hurt, we sue. Which brings us to the second objection, the kind represented by “Physicist.”
Arabs are being widely discriminated against, and we should be especially sensitive to their feelings. I don’t know, not being an Arab, if they are getting suspicious glances on the street. I do know that President Bush, practically every member of government, and everyone in the media is reassuring the American people that Arabs are really peaceful people who wish us no harm. That OBL and his followers are a tiny, tiny minority and that we should all take an Arab to lunch.
OK, I’ll buy that. But how do we guard against another terror attack by that member of the tiny, tiny minority without recognizing that they are Arab? We are confiscating knitting needles from 85-year-old Caucasian grandmothers and confiscating nail clippers from 75-year-old Caucasian grandfathers. Let’s see, I don’t recall if people like these drove the airplanes into their victims on 9/11. Confiscating knitting needles from grandmothers and nail clippers from grandfathers are the actions of stupid people. Not to be suspicious of young Arabs with guns, knives or box cutters on planes after 9/11 is to be suicidally stupid. That may be OK for people sitting safely behind computer screens at their desks. It is not OK for people who are responsible for getting a planeload of people from point A to point B.