By Neela Banerjee
Nearly one week after the terrorist attacks that rocked the country, 32-year-old Pakistani-American Ashraf Khan was on his way to Pakistan to attend his brother’s wedding. Unfortunately, his plans were cut short because of national security reasons that boiled down to nothing more than the way he looked.
With a dramatic uprising in racial profiling, the U.S. Department of Transportation and commercial airlines have recently made statements reminding pilots and staff that blatant discrimination is against the law.
Khan, who has lived in Texas for over a decade, arrived at the San Antonio Airport a good two and a half hours before his flight to Dallas. He had a four-leg journey ahead of him that would put him in Karachi just in time for his brother’s wedding, where he was to be the best man. Khan’s brother was also a permanent resident of the United States.
After checking in and receiving his boarding passes, Khan said he was thoroughly scrutinized at the security point — he was both frisked and had his backpack opened and searched. From there he went to his gate and waited for about an hour and fifteen minutes for his flight to take off. When they began boarding, Khan was one of the first people on the plane, since he had a first class ticket. The flight attendant offered him something to drink and he asked for a bottle of water.
“She brought me a bottle of water at the time I was fastening my seat belt and instead of handing it to me, she just put it on the seat next to me which was empty,” Khan said. “I thought that was so strange. I didn’t really know what to think. Actually, I knew exactly what it was — but I was shocked.”
As Khan was settling into his seat, the pilot announced that the flight would be delayed by 10 minutes because the crew was waiting on papers that they were supposed to receive from Atlanta, and that as soon as those papers arrived, they would be on their way.
“After [the pilot] made the announcement, he came out of the cockpit and came straight to me and asked me to come out of the plane to the jetway,” Khan recalled. “I had no idea what was going on.”
According to Khan, Delta Airlines pilot Warren Bildstein said that he and his crew had decided that they did not feel safe flying with Khan on the plane because of the recent terrorist attacks. Pilot Bildstein then told Khan to go back and get his backpack and the ground crew would remove his luggage from the airplane.
“I was so shocked,” Khan said. “I asked the captain to give me the reason why he does not want me on the plane and he said, ‘It is my decision whether or not I take you to Dallas.’”
Khan said the pilot went on to rudely say, “I don’t know how you got a first class ticket anyway.”
At this point a ground staff member interjected that this was the last flight to Dallas today and if [Khan] missed it, he would subsequently miss all of his connections. Khan decided not to argue, “because I figured anything I did, they would call the police,” and asked the stewardess to retrieve his backpack from the airplane because he was too embarrassed.
“Nothing like this has ever happened to me before,” Khan said. “I was so shocked and confused and upset.”
Delta officials tried to book him onto another flight the next day, which would get him into Karachi in the middle of the very wedding he was set to attend.
“I asked, ‘Can you assure me that something like this will not happen again?’” Khan said, “and they could not.” Khan decided to cancel his trip.
Khan is just one of several Pakistani, Egyptian and Indian American passengers who have been removed from airplanes because flight crews felt uncomfortable flying with them.
Both Norman Strickman, assistant director for Aviation Consumer Protection, and Fred Reid, President of Delta Airlines issued statements that condemn the discrimination, for both moral and legal implications.
Reid said, “Please continue to be observant and vigilant when enforcing security that protects our passengers . . . But don’t let [Sept. 11]’s events change you into someone suspicious of people just because of the way they look — if you do that, the terrorists will have won.”
Khan has not yet decided if he wants to take any legal action against Delta Airlines, saying that he is still trying to understand what had happened.
“I would like to do something to bring more positive change out of this horrible experience,” Khan said.
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