Boston-bound plane returns to London:Rider's name on no-fly list

[NVMojo]

August 8, 2006

A Boston-bound Boeing 777 was ordered back to London's Heathrow Airport yesterday over security fears after a passenger's name appeared on a federal no-fly list, government and airline officials said .

Four passengers, a male suspect and his mother and two sisters, were questioned by US and British security officials, who met the flight at the gate and escorted the group from the plane.

The male, whom authorities did not identify, was still being questioned by British and US officials late yesterday along with the women, federal officials said.

After arriving last night at Logan International Airport, passenger Michelle Walker-Adams told reporters that airplane personnel did not tell them what was going on.

more...

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2006/08/08/boston_bound_plane_returns_to_london/

[HuffleClaw]

1. so... ...who PAYS for this crap?

seems to me the airline should bill homeland security for this every time. the no-fly list is simply criminal.

[NVMojo]

2. yeah, I can't wait to here who the family was in this ordeal ...

hopefully not Cat Stevens!!

[wickerwoman]

3. Huh?

The article is ambiguous. Did they actually land in Boston and then take off again and go back to London? Or was that just the passenger they interviewed?

Why didn't they just land in Boston and take the passengers off the plane there? They cancelled an entire flight with 240 people (forcing all of them onto other planes) just for 4 people on a no-fly list?

And if they're on the list, how did they get on the plane in the first place? Don't they screen them when they buy tickets? Or check-in? Or any of a thousand points before the frickin' plane is actually in the air?

[nosillies]

4. I don't think they got all the way to Boston before being turned around

That's the way I understand it, as it says they landed at Heathrow two hours after they took off from there. But it is confusing.

[Ghost Dog]

5. They take details at check-in, or earlier. But HS is too slow,

so they take off anyway, usually. Then finally some probably frustrated authoritarian bureaucratic little prick actually clicks a mouse to run a scan on the list of passengers now in the air, which references a badly-organised database which is often unable to distinguish between people with similar, sometimes miskeyed, names, and many of whom find themselves in the database for no legitimate reason whatsoever.

European airlines provide to US security services details of all credit card transactions involving flight tickets (and possibly many other things). One reason why I, personally, find myself increasingly reverting to the use of relatively still untraceable cash in many cases (it's also part of the Spanish (and many others') tradition/culture).

[Igel]

8. The EU recently found that transmitting the lists early

was illegal.

So they don't transmit them ahead of time; that appears to be the problem in this case--HS got the list after the flight took off, IDed a name, and sent the flight back.

I guess the other option is the old way of doing things: wait for the people to get to customs and forbid them entry.

[Tesha]

6. The funny part was they claimed the guy "posed no threat"...

The funny part was they claimed the guy "posed no threat",
yet they still felt the need to turn the flight around
rather than just arrest him inBoston.

One end or the other of that logic tree "does not compute";
either there was no need to take the guy off the plane (likely)
or they're lying to us about the risk that was posed to the
rest of the passengers.

Tesha

[Selteri]

7. Prolly one of them dangerous

protestor types who took part in some protest somewhere so bnow is non-compuse-mentis in America. Don't like Bush and you must be a terrorist by thier logic after all.

[NVMojo]

9. Or someone with a matching name of someone on the list ...idiots

[nosillies]

10. Or some professor-type with a beard

They are ALWAYS up to something!

[proud2BlibKansan]

11. I'll bet it was a Quaker

We all know how scary they are :scared:

[maddezmom]

12. This Quacker is scarey

:D

[proud2BlibKansan]

13. LOL and evil too

How I detest that bitch.