9 Muslims removed from AirTran Airways New Year's Day Flight

A group of 9 Muslims comprising of family and friends on their way from Washington to a religious retreat in Florida were removed from an AirTran Airways New Year's Day flight after other passengers reportedly overheard a suspicious remark made by one of the Muslims. All passengers were asked to alight from the flight by federal officials for re-screening, eventually the plane took off, albeit 2 hours behind time, with all but the 9 Muslims.

FBI agents were brought in to interview the 9 Muslims to determine if they posed a threat, the Muslims were eventually cleared of all suspicions and flew to their destination in a US Airways flight as AirTran Airways refuse to allow them to book another flight. It all started with a benign remark by one Muslims on the safest place to sit on board a plane and other passengers interpreted this as suspicious and raised the alarm. AirTran Airways has since apologized to the Muslim passengers, refunded their fare, planned to reimburse them for the US Airways tickets and offer them free flight back to Washington

Why did this happen? Are people just over cautious after 9/11? Then again, is there a cost we can tie to security & safety? There is no clear solution. We can't stop people from traveling, the world from advancing with cross border trade and interactivity. We need to understand and respect each others' language, religion and cultural differences. We need to be mindful of what we say and how it will be interpreted by others. We need to adhere to the laws of the country wherever we are.

No matter what we do or how much effort we put in, there will always be groups of people whom we will fail to understand why they act in certain manner or carry out acts beyond our comprehension. We can only try to live a sane life, as much as we can.