A Pakistani-American couple has claimed that they were removed from a US-bound flight as a crew member onboard felt “uncomfortable” after noticing that they were “sweating”, saying “Allah” and texting.
Nazia and Faisal Ali have accused Delta Air Lines of Islamophobia. The airline threw them off their flight from Paris to Cincinnati, Ohio.
Nazia, 34, had finished sending a text message to her parents and was and settling into her seat for the nine-hour flight from Paris to Cincinnati when a Delta Air Lines crew member approached her and husband, Faisal and asked them to step out.
The crew member had complained to the pilot that she was uncomfortable with the Muslim couple since the woman was wearing a head scarf and using a phone, and the man was sweating, The Cincinnati Enquirer reported.
The pilot contacted the ground crew and would not take off until couple was removed.
“We had been in our seats for 45 minutes,” Nazia said on Friday in the Cincinnati area office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).
They were interrogated by a French police officer about their stay in Paris where the couple had been enjoying a brief holiday in the capital city for their 10th wedding anniversary, media reports said.
After the interrogation, the officer said he had no problem with them and there was nothing else he could ask the couple.
In the wake of the couple’s removal from the flight, the Muslim advocacy group, CAIR has filed a religious profiling complaint against Delta Air Lines to the US Department of Transportation.
Delta Airlines, in a statement, said,
(With inputs from PTI)
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