Muslims say they'll shun Northwest (Airlines) -- DFP

http://freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070117/NEWS05/701170340

Muslims say they'll shun Northwest
Group wants compensation after 40 are kept off flight

January 17, 2007

BY NIRAJ WARIKOO

FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

A group of metro Detroiters is threatening to lead a boycott of Northwest Airlines over what they say is a pattern of profiling against Muslim passengers.

"I know that many Muslims call Northwest 'Northworst'... for its treatment to the Muslim community," Imam Hassan Al-Qazwini, head of the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn, said Tuesday.

Al-Qazwini was in a group of about 40 pilgrims who were prevented from boarding a connecting flight in Germany to Detroit on Jan. 7 while returning from a trip to holy cities in Saudi Arabia. The Muslim group, most of whom are Lebanese-American Shi'ites, held a news conference Tuesday at the Dearborn mosque to describe what they say happened to them. They called for Northwest to apologize, compensate them, and discipline the employees they said profiled them.

"Otherwise," Al-Qazwini said, "if Northwest will not do that, then probably we have to call all Muslim organizations to encourage Muslims from not flying on Northwest."

With tens of thousands of Muslim customers, Northwest could be hurt financially by such a boycott, Al-Qazwini suggested, adding that "I hope Northwest will be wiser."

more...

right to ignore them on the basis that they are demanding unreasonable treatment by current American standards, and that by endorsing their position folks would be adding fuel to a fire no one needs.

Last I looked, silent prayer is not forbidden by the Koran, nor are there a lack of rules dealing with (permitting?) flexibility in the prayer pattern in the face of difficult circumstances.

- they arrived late for the flight and weren't allowed to board.

refusal to board as they did prayers in the hall, followed by not being allowed to board.

This is the group of 40 pilgrims boarding a connecting flight in Germany to Detroit on Jan. 7 who weren't at the gate in time - per the airline.

Profiling is wrong.

I tend to think that if Muslims were boycotting a specific airline, a LOT of non-Muslims would happily support that airline. Northwest isn't going to suffer with a boycott like this, IMHO.


Jim

Northwest won't let Muslims fly, so the plan is for Muslims not to fly on Northwest?

Someone has to think this through a little more.

and then have them go on record to say so.

Unless the airlines KNOWS the persons religan, then that isn't the bases for the profiling. Its those of middle easter desent that are beign profiled. All other Muslums are most likely not being bothered. However, they might stand with their brothern in the boycott.

Probes Launched After Muslims Pulled Off Flight
When six Muslim leaders were pulled off an airplane this week, some advocacy groups said it was another example of religious and racial profiling.
WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Jessica Bennett and Matthew Philips
Newsweek
Updated: 4:00 p.m. MT Nov 22, 2006
Nov. 22, 2006 - As a Muslim-American and president of the North American Imams Federation, Dr. Omar Shahin is no stranger to the heightened security of a post-9/11 world. On more than one occasion, the Phoenix, Ariz., resident says he’s been picked out of a crowd by the color of his skin—interrogated, finger printed or detained. So when Shahin headed to the airport Monday with five other imams for a flight out of Minneapolis—where the NAIF had met for a conference—the group did everything they could to avoid suspicion, according to Shahin. They wore Western clothes, he says. The men spoke only English. They didn’t book their seats together. And when it came time to conduct their sunset-time prayers, Shahin says, they did so quietly, and not all together—hoping to avoid any unwanted attention.

But when the group boarded their U.S. Airways flight bound for Phoenix, on which Shahin (a frequent flier on the airline) had been upgraded to first class, they would never leave the ground. After finding their seats and preparing for takeoff, Shahin and the other imams were escorted from the flight in handcuffs after a passenger handed a note to a flight attendant expressing concern over the group's “suspicious activity,” according to the airport police report. After several hours of questioning by federal authorities, the group was released. Yet though the airline refunded their tickets, U.S. Airways—which released a statement Tuesday saying it does "not tolerate discrimination of any kind"—reportedly denied them passage on any of its other flights and refused to help them obtain tickets through another airline. "This was the worst moment in my life," says Shahin, who, after an overnight delay, was able to get himself and his colleagues a flight on Northwest Airlines. "When they took us off the plane, six big leaders, it was very humiliating." U.S. Airways told NEWSWEEK late Wednesday that it would not comment on the case beyond its issued statement.

What was the group’s suspicious activity? According to the report filed by the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport police, the group’s loud chants of “Allah, Allah, Allah,” initially drew the suspicion of nearby passengers—one of whom said he heard the imams make anti-American comments regarding the war in Iraq. Once on the flight, the men—who allegedly boarded the plane with no carry-on luggage and used one-way tickets—seated themselves in pairs, two at the front of the plane, two in the middle, and two in the rear (all according to the police report). The men, three of whom are U.S. citizens, two of whom have green cards and one who has a worker's permit, also allegedly asked the flight crew for seat belt extensions.

But Shahin, a lawyer, disputes many of these details. He says everyone in the group had round-trip tickets that he had booked—and that he has the documentation to prove it. The reason he was at the front of the flight was because he was upgraded to first class because he’s a frequent flyer on the airline. And the reason he asked for a seatbelt extension? Shahin says his 290-pound frame should make that obvious. As for the anti-American remarks, Shahin says the group was talking about the conference, which, ironically, was focused on building bridges to the non-Muslim community. And to avoid this very type of incident, Shahin says he’d already notified both the F.B.I. and local Minneapolis police department of the NAIF conference, as a precaution. “What they claim is just not true," he says.



http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15856333/site/newsweek/

-the article you posted is from November. The link for the article in this new incident is in the OP.

versions here of what happened so who knows the true story. Passengers (not necessarily Muslims) generally have a habit of making the airline (not necessarily Northwest) into the bad guy.

With the demand for seats on the airlines what it is these days I doubt NWA is terribly worried.

Do they hate profit or what? Northwest can't handle the lost business from the muslims in Michigan.

nwa can handle any lost business from people refusing to fly just fine, they are constantly overbooked and in a state of chaos as it is from the overload

get to your gate on time or expect to have your seat given to one of the many stand-bys, i don't care what color you are

i was once offered TWO bumps in one day out of dtw because of the high demand for the relatively few seats and i am not the only one who can say the same

follow the rules, don't expect special treatment just because you're some holy person in some religion, and you'll be fine

i doubt any boycott will get off the ground, since dtw flyers are hub captives, but if it did happen and the loads were somewhat reduced, i'm sure it would be a great relief to nwa financially and certainly a great relief to the rest of us dtw travelers who are tired of being packed in like sardines

every time they pay me $300-750 plus hotel, food, and ground transport voucher to take a bump, it is costing them money to be overbooked

a boycott of this type might actually help the nwa bottom line

I've been flying NW and its predecessors since the '70s. They're horrible.

Believe me, one second late, and you don't get on the plane. In fact, they often close airplane doors well before the scheduled flight departure times in smaller airports.

They're slow to up the ante to get enough volunteers to fly later in overbooked situations, and overbooked flights leave late because of it.

Northwest's right hand never, and I mean never, knows what the left hand is doing. Sometimes passengers observe the right hand splitting apart so that it doesn't know what it's doing.

Long waits on the tarmac are frequent.

Don't get me started about the Mighty Mesabi commuter plane Gate G at the old DTW.

The one good thing I will say for them is that they understand de-icing, and have good equipment for it.

The only airline that I have flown on a regular basis is U.S. Air, AKA "US Scare" and "You Still Agony," whose exploits are also chronicled in this thread.

Hopefully they revise some of their policies so they can get this straightened out (and their company which is in financial trouble).

DTW this past weekend (in order to get to MSP), and there were 83 folks on the standby list. Weather and packed flights are wreaking havoc on the system. A system that is just plain broke. The companies, the employees, and the passengers all have a mutual hate-thing going on. I remember when travelling used to be fun.

They have crappy service and high fares, they outsource maintenance to foreign countries, and they broke their promise to invest in Minnesota's Iron Range after taking a huge handout from the state. Sun Country goes where I need to go with lower fares and better service.

the last time I flew NW, they overbooked our flight out of Oakland. We waited for an hour and a half on the runway, waiting for someone to give up their seats. When we finally got to Chicago, we missed all connector flights to Grand Rapids for the night. The NW clerk told us we would have to sleep in the lobby at O'Hare. My brother got in his face, and they put us up for the night in a nearby hotel. But they were all so nasty about the whole thing.

I prefer to fly American.

1. ALL the airlines overbook. If they didn't they'd be even broker then they are because irresponsible passengers double book and don't cancel.

2. NO airline takes 90 min. to get volunteers for o/b seats. That's done before the flight is boarded and if, when the flight IS boarded there are not enough seats and no volunteers the people without seats are then deboarded and deemed involuntary denied boardings and given extra compensation. TOPS this would take a 10 min delay.

3. FYI NWA doesn't fly from Oakland to Chicago. They never have flown this route. If you went to Chicago from Oakland on NWA you were not on NWA. NWA also doesn't fly from Ohare to Grand Rapids. That is UA or AA. Period. Get your facts straight.

4. And guess what? The airline was under NO obligation to put you up for the night. Whatever airline you think you were flying on. Sounds to me like they weren't all that nasty. If your brother had "got in my face" I would have called the airport police and you would been sleeping in the lobby.

Unless, say, they make satisfactory amends. It is important to reward good behavior and punish bad when making one's purchasing decisions".

there is nothing special about northwest in this story, what is special is people being given media headlines and wanting compensation for not bothering to get to their gate in time and then playing the religion card

i'm damn sick of it, if your religion says that you are special and the rules don't apply to you, maybe you should stick to general aviation rather than commercial airlines

in any case, as my other post says, nwa will benefit from having less overbooked planes -- it costs them financially every time they have to pay me $300 or $750 plus hotel, food, and ground transport to be bumped from an overbooked flight through DTW

so any boycott will no doubt help nwa financially, heh, perhaps they're behind the spread of this otherwise pretty silly story of a group trying to extort the airline for compensation they're not entitled to

You can always tell on airline thread frequent fliers from people who fly once every two years, pay 198.00 round trip cross country and expect fuckin cavier with their champange brunch. :eyes:

Northwest Airlines should end the bigoted, xenophobic and hate-filled profiling.

If the were late, and NW doesn't board late passengers, why were some boarded? Were some late and the late ones weren't boarded?


"But Northwest officials defended their actions Tuesday, repeating that the 40 or so pilgrims were unable to board because they weren't at the gate in time.

"They showed up at the gate late," said Dean Breest, a spokesman for Northwest Airlines. "All customers need to be on time."

Northwest Airlines requires passengers to check in for international flights at least 60 minutes prior to departure and to be on board the aircraft at least 30 minutes prior to the scheduled departure time, according to a statement it issued.

Al-Qazwini and other pilgrims said Tuesday that they were at the gate at least an hour and a half before departure time.

"We were treated really, really, really badly," said Jennifer Zreik, 29, of Dearborn, one of the travelers.

According to Zreik and others, some of the Muslims with the group were allowed on the plane. But about 40 were not."

Than there are Muslims who will choose other carriers.

The only way Northwest would be hurt would be if people other than Muslims joined the boycott.

Full article: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1110AP_Muslims_Northwest.html