On 4 Nov 2001, at 17:59, Bill Stewart wrote:
It's one thing for a minimum wage ArentSoBright security guard to be concerned about the people carrying scary computer parts. (Hi, Dave!) That's a problem, but it's a one-off.
This is something different - the Guardsman is sworn to uphold the Constitution, yet he's violating someone's rights in what appears to be a pre-planned retailiation for her political beliefs. That's a one-strike firing offense, like a cop getting caught stealing.
Right. I didn't see it this way, I got the impression that she was prevented from flying because she gave the guard attitude (deliberately slowing down when he told her to speed up, etc.) rather than for her politics as such. Still unacceptable behavior, of course, but (to my mind) not nearly as bad. My suggestion that he should be let off with a reprimand should be read in that context. I should add here that none of us know exactly what happened, and it's conceivable that she might have said/done stuff significantly more threatening than what she mentioned, and that keeping her off the flight was actually the right thing to do. Not asserting that this is the case, of course, just pointing out the possibility.
The separate issue is the airline - the airline employee clearly deserves a reprimand, and whoever told all the other airlines that they don't want this Green Party person flying does as well. They sold her a ticket, and violated their contract to carry her, and the issue of whether it really was safety-related or whether a really egregious breach of contract is a question for a court.
I'm not sure how egregious is egregious in the context of missing flights. I've been unable to fly when I was supposed to because of weather, mechanical problems, and because the asshole cabs weren't there to pick me up when they were supposed to be. Never get any compensation for it. None of this justifies anything, of course, but the point is that there's always a non-negligible chance that you won't be able to get on the flight you paid for. So the odds of getting significantly more than a refund on the ticket seem slim. Also, so far as motivation goes, I expect that the airline employees genuinely believed she was a safety risk, it seems highly unlikely that they just felt like persecuting greens. Whether or not that was a reasonable belief is a separate question. George