Fly the John Doe skies, mark 2

Repeat it with me: I am John Doe. I am John Doe.

A group of Iraqi Pentagon contractors is suing American Airlines claiming racial discrimination for delaying its flight, but a police report shows that some of the men might have been intoxicated, behaved in a frightening and belligerent manner and scared one family off the plane.

The captain of American Airlines Flight 590 from San Diego to Chicago delayed the late-night Aug. 28 takeoff after crew members reported that they “did not feel safe,” according to the report obtained by The Washington Times.

The Iraqi men filed the lawsuit last week in the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of Michigan, where they live, saying they were falsely identified as “posing a risk to security by reliance on racial profiling and through discrimination based on race and national origin.”

A discussion ensued and the men jumped to the conclusion that they were being pulled off the plane because of their race. Having flown from Dulles to Kuwait and back, that strikes me as highly unlikely: Both flights had numerous Arabs along with a melting pot mix of folks, everyone was sanguine and no one got yanked off either flight. Iraqis are flying back and forth from the Middle East every single day of the week, with only this one incident to talk about. The men work for a defense contractor that provides training for the Marines, so they’re probably very aware of all of that.

The men are suing the airline and the flight attendants, who are named as “John Doe” in the suit.

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