9 Passengers removed from the AirTran flight after passengers misunderstood their conversation.

One of the passengers, Atif Irfan says federal aviation authorities removed all nine of them after passengers overheard them discussing the safest place to sit on the plane. Passengers took it the wrong way and understood it as threat.
Two members of the family, all but one of whom are American citizens by birth, were talking specifically about the safest place to sit on a plane, before the plane took off from Reagan National in Washington about safety, according to one report.

Atifs older brother Kashif Irfan said in an interview to the Post:

“My brother and his wife were discussing some aspect of airport security. The only thing my brother said was, ‘Wow, the jets are right next to my window’.”

Atif Irfan said in an interview for CNN: “ be careful not to use any buzz words like bomb, threats, anything that would put us in a volatile situation.”

“The FBI agents actually spoke with the AirTran personnel at Washington Reagan (National) Airport and encouraged them to let us fly again in another flight towards Orlando. AirTran refused, despite the fact we were cleared on any allegations of wrong doing.”

AirTran spokesman Tad Hutcheson told The Washington Post.
“At the end of the day, people got on and made comments they shouldn’t have made on the airplane. Other people heard them, misconstrued them. It just so happened these people were of Muslim faith and appearance. It escalated, it got out of hand and everyone took precautions.”

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