paranoia, bigotry, and stupidity in the air

flyMonarch.com, the site for Monarch Airlines, encourages you to buy their product with the byline 'expect more, pay less'. Well, two arab gentlemen certainly got more than they expected, because they were turfed off the aircraft by Monarch. Apparently some passengers saw the two men behaving 'suspiciously' (i.e. speaking in what they thought was Arabic), acted up, and forced the captain of the flight to have them removed. The plane was then cleared and searched for explosives. But of course, who is better qualified to judge these matters than Joe Public. What an invaluable repository of knowledge the common man is. Just wave a terrorist under his nose and all the x-rays, body searches, passport monitoring, liquid exclusion, etc. of the security staff is revealed as the hollow sham we've always believed it to be. In the future let's invite the non-arab, English speaking, white-skinned public to do the screening and leave all that technical stuff at home.

Oh, and one other thing, let's not pay less and expect more. Given this example of Monarch's judgement, do we really want to fly with these people? (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/5269106.stm)