(Newswire.net — May 9, 2016) — An American Airlines flight was delayed for almost two hours due to a woman who expressed suspicions that there might be a terrorist on-board, USA Today reported.
In the seat next to her, Guido Menzio, professor of economics at the University of Pennsylvania, was writing a math equation. The airplane detached from the Philadelphia airport gate and started taxiing towards the runway for the flight to Syracuse.
Suddenly, the female passenger next to him called a flight attendant and passed her a note, Menzio wrote in a post named “unbelievable” on his Facebook profile.
Describing the incident, he said, the airplane suddenly returned back to the gate and the captain approached him asking the 40-year-old Ivy League professor to follow him where two “men in black” looking FBI agents at the gate exit questioned Menzio about the passenger next to him, who left the airplane, saying she was too ill to take the flight.
“They ask me about my neighbor. I tell them I noticed nothing strange. They tell me she thought I was a terrorist because I was writing strange things on a pad of paper. I laugh. I bring them back to the plane. I showed them my math,” Menzio wrote in a post.
Confirming that the passenger alerted airplane crew by handing the stewardess a note, American Airlines carrier spokesman Casey Norton told the AP that the crew followed protocol to take care of an ill passenger and then to investigate her allegations.
According to Norton, the officials determined it was a false alarm and allowed the airline departure that was delayed more than two hours.
Menzio’s Italian origin and curly dark hair propelled a fear in the passenger next to him. “Not seeking additional information after reports of ‘suspicious activity’ … is going to create a lot of problems, especially as xenophobic attitudes may be emerging,” Menzio said in an e-mail to the AP.
This is not the first time such an incident has occurred. An Arabic woman was denied a can of soda out of fear from the flight attendant that she might weaponize it.
The most recent ethnic profiling incident from over the last few months occurred in April. An Iraqi student was removed from a Southwest Airlines flight because he made a passenger next to him uncomfortable.
Reports say he was talking in Arabic over the phone and that made the other passenger nervous. It was later revealed he was just having a conversation with his uncle.