What exactly happened on this airline flight in 2009? It’s one man’s story against the airline’s story—with a lot of other parties confusing it even more.
TERROR ON THE TARMAC
In late November 2009, Tedd Petruna, a NASA employee from Texas, wrote an e-mail to his friend describing something that happened to him on board a Houston-bound plane as it was taxiing to its runway in Atlanta. Petruna wrote that he was sitting in first class on AirTran Flight 297 when “a group of 11 Muslim men in full attire peppered themselves throughout the plane.” They walked around despite being told to sit down, took pictures of fellow passengers, and talked loudly to each other in Arabic. Two of the men in the back of the plane were even watching a pornographic film on a camcorder. From Petruna’s e-mail:
They are only permitted to do this prior to Jihad. If a Muslim man goes into a strip club, he has to view the woman via mirror with his back to her. (Don’t ask me…I don’t make the rules, but I’ve studied.) The 3rd stewardess informed them that they were not to have electronic devices on at this time. To which one of them said “Shut up, infidel dog!”
Petruna and, as he wrote, “another Texan” got up and started wrestling with two of the men. Petruna yelled, “You WILL sit down or you will get off this plane!” After the Texans got the Arab men back in their seats, “Three TSA [Transportation Security Administration] officers and four cops burst into the plane, and the 11 men were escorted away.” Then the plane returned to the gate, where all of the luggage was removed but the passengers remained on board. A little while later, all 11 men got back on board and quietly took their seats. But the flight crew was visibly shaken—they refused to fly with the men, so they were replaced by another crew. The passengers, led by Petruna, also refused to fly, so the captain cancelled the flight. Petruna concluded: “The terrorists wanted to see how TSA would handle it, how the crew would handle it, and how the passengers would handle it. The threat is real.”
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Petruna’s friend who received the e-mail, Gene Hackemack, forwarded it to his friends with this message added to the beginning: “In my opinion, the Muslims are all getting very brave now, since they have one of their own in the White House…Thank God for people like Tedd Petruna.” From there, the story was reprinted on several right-wing news sites. “The Project 9.12,” a Web site run by Fox News commentator Glenn Beck, hailed Petruna as a hero. Right-wing blogger Debbie Schlussel said that Petruna confirmed to her on the phone that the events happened as he said they did. Schlussel wrote: “WAKE. UP. AMERICA. We are under siege.”
As the story gained more traction in the press, AirTran released a point-by-point rebuttal that basically said that Petruna made the whole thing up. According to the airline:
• The men allegedly watching porn were in the back, so there was no way Petruna could have known what they were doing.
• There were 13 men in the group, not 11. They sat throughout the plane because they were unable to book seats near each other.
• They were not adorned in “full Muslim attire”—they were dressed “like any other passenger.”
• At no time did TSA or law enforcement officials board the plane, and there were no altercations with other passengers or crew. (And the flight was not cancelled, just delayed.)
• A replacement flight crew did take over. AirTran explained that this is a common practice due to delays and scheduling conflicts. (None of the flight crew talked to reporters, nor did any of the 13 men in question, whose names weren’t released in press reports.)
• Tedd Petruna’s connecting flight to Atlanta was late—he arrived 26 minutes after flight 297 boarded. “After conducting additional research, we have verified, according to flight manifests, that Theodore Petruna was never actually on board the flight.”
AirTran’s denials only prompted allegations from the right that it was covering up the incident because it didn’t want to offend Muslims. Another passenger, a Texas chaplain named Keith Robinson, accused AirTran of letting the men back on so they wouldn’t sue (the airline had recently settled a lawsuit by a Middle Eastern man who was kicked off a flight for acting suspiciously). But Robinson wasn’t actually on the plane either. He was, however, at the gate when the flight crew deplaned afterward: “You could tell something was going on,” he told a Houston news station. “The feeling that I have from what I observed is there was intentional intimidation. It was almost an ethnic bullying situation. By putting the men back on board, AirTran decided it was better to emotionally traumatize the remaining passengers on Flight 297 for the remainder of the flight.”
Making the story even more complicated, two passengers who were actually on the plane confirmed AirTran’s story. Nancy Deveikis, who was sitting behind one of the Arab men, said the whole thing was a “big miscommunication”—he was just looking at pictures. The flight attendant grew frustrated because he didn’t speak English, so she took his camera away from him. It was then that the man’s friend, who was sitting nearby, offered to speak to TSA as the man’s interpreter to clear the matter up. Another passenger told reporters that Petruna is “living in a fantasy world.”
Petruna said he never expected his story to be forwarded all over the Internet. He refused to answer reporters’ questions but insisted that he was on that plane. However, he said that he “embellished” many of the facts in his e-mail to impress his friend. He admitted that the men weren’t wearing Muslim attire and they weren’t taking pictures of people. Still, he maintains that AirTran isn’t telling the complete story, either. He declined to say anything else because he’s “in the middle of a lawsuit about this right now.” But according to an AirTran official, the airline hasn’t received a subpoena from Petruna or his lawyers.
The Federal Aviation Administration said it found no evidence of safety violations. After a brief investigation, the TSA ruled it a “customer-service issue.” As far as AirTran is concerned, the matter is closed.
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