ROBERT SIEGEL, host.
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Robert Siegel. Atif Irfan is a lawyer from Alexandria, Virginia. Yesterday, he was one of nine American Muslim passengers who were ordered off an AirTran flight from Washington's Reagan National Airport bound for Orlando. Evidently, a couple of passengers overheard a conversation between Mr. Irfan and his sister-in-law and mistook it for plotting some terrorist act. Atif Irfan and the others were questioned by the FBI. The whole group was cleared. But later yesterday, the group still had trouble getting on an AirTran flight. And Mr. Irfan now joins us from Orlando. Welcome.
Mr. ATIF IRFAN (Lawyer, Alexandria, Virginia): Oh, thank you.
SIEGEL: What did you and your sister-in-law say that somebody obviously misconstrued?
Mr. IRFAN: So, the conversation that we were having - normally, we sit in the center of the plane, because I have always been told that it's the safest place. In this situation, because we're traveling with such a large group of my family, I had booked all the tickets for the back of the plane - or when I selected the seats, I booked them for the back of the plane because it was the only place where there was a large amount of seats available. In doing so, we're walking back towards to the plane, and my sister-in-law comments, like, hey, you know, we're by the bathrooms; that's kind of gross. And she's like, well, at least it's the safest place to be by the engines.
And in this plane, the engines were in the back of this particular plane. And so, in saying so, I said to my wife and to my sister-in-law, actually, the safest place to sit in a plane is towards the wings because it's the most structurally sound. And my sister-in-law proceeded to say that, oh, I guess that might be true, you know, considering it's probably not safe to sit by the engines in case something happens. And that was pretty much it. It was a pretty, you know, benign comment. We didn't use any of those, you know, buzz words like bomb or...
SIEGEL: Right, right, right.
Mr. IRFAN: Anything like that, you know, terrorist. And I guess from the reports that I'm hearing, obviously, the people that heard this gleaned something very different from it, that we are about to attack.
SIEGEL: Oh, where you were positioning the explosives to blow up the plane or something like that.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. IRFAN: Something like that, to that effect, or that we were plotting something else, but it's a quite a ridiculous thing to think, considering that we had, you know, three small children with us. And you know - anyways, people, a lot of times, I think, tend to hear what they want to hear.
SIEGEL: The account I read of this in the Washington Post said first of all, since this is a telephone call, I wouldn't know that you were clearly a Muslim family. People were wearing attire that we associate with being...
Mr. IRFAN: Sure, yeah.
SIEGEL: From South Asia, I guess.
Mr. IRFAN: My brother and I both have beards, and all of the women in the family wear headscarves. So, other than that, we were wearing, you know, pants and shirts otherwise.
SIEGEL: Right. So, after this, you're thrown off the plane. And who actually questioned you about this?
Mr. IRFAN: The federal marshals initially questioned us. They sort of had us, well, stand in the walkway from - that leads to the airport to the plane. And just had a very quickly like, do you know what this is, why we're doing this? There were some comments made that people felt uncomfortable with that you shouldn't have said on the plane. We - normally, my wife and I are actually very careful about this kind of stuff, but this was, I guess, some time that we maybe should have been a little more careful. Once the federal marshals spoke to us very briefly, we eventually talked to the FBI agents. And the FBI agents, after a very short amount of questioning, very quickly realized that we not only posed no threat to that airline or that plane, but that, quite frankly, we were somewhat model citizens.
SIEGEL: But by that time, I gather, getting on the AirTran flight was out of the question, according to the airline.
Mr. IRFAN: Oh, they actually had removed everyone from the airplane initially and sort of paraded everyone past us while we stood in the concourse, and everyone was giving all these sort of glaring looks of, like, what was this, you know, terrorist family or what have you. And they had, I think, some kind of a - like, a dog that can sniff out bombs or whatever go through the plane and take off our luggage, quarantined us for awhile, let everyone back on the plane, and they took off, and then they questioned us. And so, obviously, there was no way to get back on that particular flight. We were just hoping that AirTran would fly us out after they realized what a mistake this was.
SIEGEL: And they wouldn't?
Mr. IRFAN: Oh, actually, they wouldn't. After the federal agent spoke to me just for a few minutes, he brought in my wife to question with me because he realized that this was obviously a very, very bad mistake. After that, the FBI agents who had questioned us felt so bad about the situation - and I have to really commend them for this - they actually went to AirTran, to the counter and actually asked them, can you please let these people on the next flight - on to AirTran? They are not a security threat whatsoever, and they should be allowed to fly on this next flight, whatever next flight you have going to Orlando. And the airline refused.
SIEGEL: You made it to Orlando somehow, obviously. You're there now.
Mr. IRFAN: Yep. Actually, again, to commend the federal agents, they actually went to U.S. Airways next, and U.S. Airways, after talking to them, U.S. Airways was more than happy to let us fly.
SIEGEL: Again, let the record show here that the exotic country you come from is called Michigan, I think, if I understand that.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. IRFAN: That's right, born and raised.
SIEGEL: Born and raised. It sounds like an infuriating and humiliating experience.
Mr. IRFAN: Unfortunately, it was somewhat humiliating. We try not to let it be infuriating.
SIEGEL: Well, Mr. Irfan, thank you very much.
Mr. IRFAN: Thank you for your call. I appreciate it.
SIEGEL: That's Atif Irfan, who's one of nine Muslim passengers taken off an AirTran flight yesterday. In a statement, AirTran says when members of the group approached the counter to be rebooked, the airline had not yet been notified the passengers had been cleared to fly. AirTran has now refunded the group's original tickets and offered reimbursement for the U.S. Airways flight they took to Orlando. And AirTran also offered to fly the group home for free and apologized for the incident.