Terrorist 'lookalike' wins $27.5m

Apparently, complaining about bad service on an aircraft brands you as a "terrorist" these days.

Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
Thursday April 13, 2006
The Guardian

An economics professor from California who was arrested because a flight attendant thought she looked like a terrorist has been awarded $27.5m (£15.7m).
In a victory for critics of racial profiling, a jury in El Paso, Texas, ordered Southwest Airlines to pay damages to Samantha Carrington for false imprisonment and malicious prosecution after she was bundled off a flight and arrested because flight attendants found her appearance suspicious.

Ms Carrington, who is of Iranian origin, had been returning to Los Angeles from Houston, where her mother was being treated for cancer, in 2003 when flight attendants had her arrested during a scheduled stop in El Paso.

In court documents, three attendants accused Ms Carrington of grabbing them and of threatening to go into the cockpit unless they called the pilot. Ms Carrington maintains that she complained only about poor in-flight service. Criminal charges were never filed after an FBI officer assigned to investigate said he did not believe the flight attendants' version. Southwest denied its attendants acted improperly. But later, its president wrote to apologise for the "heinous" incident, offering tickets in compensation.

Ms Carrington said she felt vindicated by the verdict but has been unable to clear her name from terror watchlists.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1752799,00.html

for life would have probably been cheaper.

if she was put on the "no-fly" list?

flight now.

Win big $$$$$$

I'm just sayin'...

on an airline flight. Attendents have less than zero respect for the cattle and sheep who have the great misfortune of have to fly on any of those god damned airlines. Just say one thing discouraging and it's as if you offered them $5 for a blow job.

my crime?

The attendant handed a glass of water over the top of the seats to a woman in the row behind me. About one-third of it spilled on me. It seems like they should pass it down the row but whatever. I asked for a napkin. She says, "What is your problem?" I said "you spilled water on me" Then she comes back with the napkins and drops them on my lap. I'm pretty used to this stuff and I figure she is trying to get my goat.

Then comes my mistake...I read her badge which has only her first name so I asked for her last name.

She says "what's YOUR name? I can write letters too." I said "I asked you first" She says "Fine. I can get it off the manifest." She steps away then spins and says "No. I'm going to write you up." (translation: 'you will be handed over to air marshalls when we land and you will go to airport jail for as long as they feel like it, usually 4 to 8 hours).

She goes to the front and back of the plane and they are out of forms, hence no write up. As we are preparing to land, she sits in the back-facing jumper and stares daggers at me.

(I did write a letter and got a $100 credit but next time I will just let them pour the damned water on me.)

are an merely an annoyance, it's that way on every single one of them. Just try and use a $20 bill to pay for a drink some time, You would think that by now they would have bothered to figure out a way to make change, but nooooooo, it's the same as it was in 1970. No matter what it is, you feel like you are really putting them out.

Before takeoff.

way too involved to go into, but it involved my trying to read a little Napoleon's ID badge, as well.

they brought on an armed National Guardsmen to take me off the plane, but I wasn't arrested.

Wasn't the family in that old show called CARRINGTON? She should change her name to Krystal, or whatever the Linda Evans' character was called!!!

How did a Bush lookalike wind up on a domestic flight?