[OldFriend]

A passenger on the flight was on one of the morning shows and said that the pilot did indeed tell the passengers that those who were not Christian were crazy. Further, when the passengers began asking the flight attendants what was going on, they evidently told the captain that the passengers were frightened........the pilot then got on the speaker and apologyzed to the flight attendants for not giving them a heads-up!

Sorry, the pilot was WAY out of line......

Some of the passengers tried to call 911 from the plane.

[SJackson]

A passenger on the flight was on one of the morning shows and said that the pilot did indeed tell the passengers that those who were not Christian were crazy. Further, when the passengers began asking the flight attendants what was going on, they evidently told the captain that the passengers were frightened........the pilot then got on the speaker and apologyzed to the flight attendants for not giving them a heads-up!...Sorry, the pilot was WAY out of line......Some of the passengers tried to call 911 from the plane.

You touch an important point, that there is a safety rather than religious concern in play here.

Presuming everyone has forgotten 9/11, it might be fair to say that the hijacking risk in this country was a free trip to Cuba. That's not a universal experience though.

A number of times a similar question, usually requesting identification of Americans and/or Jews but designed to segregate passengers, has been asked on airplanes and on occasion ships. It's generally asked after control of the particular means of transport has been achieved, and has frequently ended in death.

It sounds as though the nature of this incident was known rather quickly, but a pilot, presumably aware of the history of hijackings, should know better. A resonable person could have concluded something was wrong, in fact it sounds as though a number did. There could have been a bad ending here.