18-month-old barred from flight

I've gathered the TSA were a bunch of over-protective douchebags, but holy fuck, this is a new low!

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The parents of an 18-month-old girl say they were "humiliated" after being pulled off a plane and told their young child had been placed on a no-fly list.

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After boarding a JetBlue flight in Ft. Lauderdale, the parents of young Riyanna, who asked to remain anonymous over fears of repercussions, were told the Transportation Security Agency (TSA) wanted to interview their toddler.

"And I said, 'For what?'" Riyanna's mother told ABC affiliate WPBF 25 News on Wednesday. "And he said, 'Well, it's not you or your husband. Your daughter was flagged as no fly.' I said, 'Excuse me?'"

Whoever is to blame, the parents say they believe the incident began because they are both of Middle Eastern descent and because the wife wears a hijab, a traditional headscarf. A 2011 poll from the Pew Research Center found that Muslim Americans say they believe they are disproportionately singled out by airport security officers.

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"TSA did not flag this child as being on the No Fly list," the group said in a statement to the Atlanta Journal Constitution. "TSA was called to the gate by the airline and after talking to the parents and confirming through our vetting system, TSA determined the airline had mistakenly indicated the child was on a government watch list."

Our tax dollars hard at work, America!

They probably didn't want to listen to the little shit cry the entire flight.

Because I'm a fluffy idiot with permanently rose-tinted glasses on, I tend to say things like: "Don't put to malice what can be put to mistake." But in this case, I think it's relevant.

Put yourself in the shoes of the poor mooks working at the airport for a second. They see that *name* is on a watch list. They then find out that *name* is actually *baby*. While I bet that what they //would// have done is laugh it off, realising the mistake and let it go. Thing is that the poor mooks have Bosses, and the *Name*/*Baby* is *official* so far as they know. That *official* marker means that someone above their pay-grade needs to deal with it, or else it's their jobs.

See where this is going?

As a product of hypersensitive security fears, and in a pretty competitive job market, people are too scared to take action outside of their job description, in fact following their job description to the letter, regardless of common sense.


This highlights problems. But different problems than those usually laid at the feet of over-cautious security/TSA.

Mikey Go WOOGA wrote:

They probably didn't want to listen to the little shit cry the entire flight.

Must you ALWAYS be so pessimistic mikey? It's CLEARLY obvious that they didn't server her favorite food and drink, thus she went batshit insane on them.

They wanted to interview an 18-month-old. Hmm...

Agent: Why are you on this flight?
Riyanna: Ba ba ba ba...
Agent: You'd better tell the truth!
Riyanna: Mama. Dada.
Agent: You are under arrest!
Riyanna: Wahhh!
Agent: She's refusing to answer. That's prima facie evidence of criminal intent.

I'd say this is less racial / religious targeting and more "this is what happens when you cut costs by giving jobs to computers"

Yeah, if you name your baby Charlie Manson or whatever, their name is probably going to get all kinda of hell from security if the only thing screening them is a program sifting for certain names.

As WD said, this is a huge ID10T error.

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Charlie Manson

Don't call him that. It makes you sound like you're his best friend.

And you're not besties with Charles Manson, are you?

Are you?

Mr.Doobie wrote:

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Charlie Manson

Don't call him that. It makes you sound like you're his best friend.

And you're not besties with Charles Manson, are you?

Are you?

I'm just sayin': people make bad decisions without fully realising the consequences. Parents idiotically name their baby "charlie" and the kid is put on every terror watch list for the rest of his life.

But, see, we think this is ridiculous, but there's another layer of fuckery when it comes to ethnic names. You know, the whole "every child is named Mohammed" business, or common chinese names like Chen. They just don't work well with computer name-sifting algorithms.