interesting story

Sledge187 · 12-29-09, 01:39 PM

Wow! This is crazy!

jayc88 · 12-29-09, 02:26 PM

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/hotstories/6764414.html

Tedd Petruna, a diver at NASA's Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory at the Johnson Space Center, e-mailed some friends and family a lengthy and detailed account of a frightening incident last month on an AirTran airplane getting ready to take off from Atlanta to Houston.
In the e-mail, sent 10 days after the Nov. 17 incident, Petruna portrayed himself as a cowboy hero helping to thwart a dozen Muslim terrorists who appeared to be conducting what Petruna called a “dry run” of a terrorist attack.
“I was in 1st class coming home,” Petruna wrote. “11 Muslim men got on the plane in full attire. 2 sat in 1st class and the rest peppered themselves throughout the plane all the way to the back.”
He proceeds to tell of the men standing as the plane taxis, talking to each other loudly on cell phones, “showing footage of a porno they had taped the night before.”
When a flight attendant told them to shut off the electronic devices, one of the men said, “Shut up, infidel dog!” When she tried to take the camcorder “he began to scream in her face in Arabic.”
At that point all 11 got up and began walking to the back of the cabin.
“This is where I had had enough,” Petruna wrote. “I got up and started to walk to the back where I heard a voice behind me from another Texan twice my size say, ‘I got your back.' I grabbed the man who had been on the phone by the arm and said, ‘you WILL go sit down or you Will be thrown from this plane.'”
The fellow Texan then grabbed the man and Petruna grabbed a second man.
As the two forced the men to the front, “3 TSA (Transportation Security Administration) and 4 police officers entered” and escorted the 11 men off the plane.
But after a while the doors opened “and on walked all 11!”
The upset crew refused to fly and were replaced, and Petruna demanded to leave but was told he couldn't.
“Now I'm mad! I said, I am a grown man who bought this ticket, who's time is mine with a family at home and I am going through that door, or I'm going through that door with you under my arm!”
Soon he and “everyone behind us” got up and left and the flight was canceled. He said agents asked him to write a statement.
Incorrect details

One of Petruna's friends sent the e-mail on to others and in the past week it bounced all over the Internet, cited on Glenn Beck's Web page and by a conservative columnist and thousands of posts as political correctness gone mad.
It was also picked up by some mainstream newspapers and TV stations (including KHOU-TV here).
Only one problem: Parts of it weren't actually quite true.
Petruna, who soon quit returning reporters' calls (including mine), admitted off-camera to KHOU-TV that he was wrong about the men's clothing and he hadn't personally seen the porn.
AirTran disputes a few other things. They say:
There were 13 men from the Middle East, religion unknown.
No security personnel entered the plane. Every passenger who wanted to get off and take a later flight was permitted to do so. Twelve did. The flight proceeded without incident to Houston.
Not even on the plane

And, uh, Tedd Petruna wasn't on the plane.
Christopher White, spokesman for AirTran, said the flight manifests required by the FAA (in case of a crash) show Petruna's flight from Akron arrived after the flight to Houston pulled away from the gate. He is listed as a passenger on the next flight to Houston. (Petruna told one reporter this was untrue and he was considering a lawsuit.)
White said TSA agents interviewed the Middle Eastern men inside the terminal. Only one spoke English, he said, and he was very helpful. The other men had not understood the instructions from the crew members, who were indeed upset and were replaced.
One passenger who actually was on the plane, a former cop who now heads a large security firm in Atlanta, had advice for both AirTran and all of us potential Petrunas.
Brent Brown told an Atlanta TV station that AirTran blundered badly by not telling anyone on the plane what was going on. This led many passengers to assume the worst.
As for the rest of us:
“If you're going to embellish a real story, be careful where you post it. Because in this day and environment — and that's never going to change now — it's going to get out there and you're going to be embarrassed that you have embellished something that already was an incredible story.”
rick.casey@chron.com