nikki
Moto Junkie
- Apr 21, 2000
- 5,802
- 1
Wow - what a roller coaster for our family on Friday, July 8th. My step-sister (Amanda) and her husband (Tony) have been in Romania for 2+ years in the Peace Corps. They were finally scheduled to come home on Friday, arriving at O'Hare in Chicago around 3pm on Air France flight 050 (flying in from Paris).
My step-mom and I were getting ready to pick them up when she decided to check the flight status online. She yells from the computer that they were delayed until 9pm. I go into the computer room and notice their plane left late from Paris, was out 25 minutes, and returned back to the airport (find out later they had landing gear problems or something). But then they left again, and returned back to Paris FOUR HOURS LATER! Plane problems we assumed.... but that seems strange to land in the same airport four hours later. We all decided that was weird, and watched as their new departure time kept getting pushed back further and further.
So my step-mom was starting to get restless and impatient, and my dad takes her out to dinner at a local sports bar. I meet them up there and we're finishing our dinner, and out of the corner of my eye I catch the Air France logo on the 6pm news and see the caption "Flight From Paris". I sprinted over to the big TV to try to hear, but missed the story. We all went into panic mode and rushed back to the house to check for more info.
My heart was racing 100 mph, and thank God we get back to the computer to see they have finally left (again). So we all were able to breathe a sign of relief. Then I do a google search, and we find out what's going on. Two hours into flight, the US denied the Air France flight access to land in the US due to a passenger on the federal "no-fly" list. So while over the Atlantic, they turned the plane around, landed back in Paris, the police pulled 4-5 men from the plane, and the plane was searched for bad stuff. Wow - that had to have been scary.
So with a new arrival time of 2am, we made our way up to O'Hare around 1am and it was like a circus in the International terminal. News crews and TV cameras and a bunch of uneasy people. We were definately glad to see Amanda and Tony walk through the doors around 2:30 am.
Amanda did a short news interview and made it onto the WGN news. Turns out the men were about two rows behind Amanda and Tony on the plane. The news reporters kept asking the ethnicity of the men, but being a Peace Corps type of person, she refused to make judgements or answer.
As you can imagine, it was pretty scary for them. They actually announced over the plane (as they were turning around over the ocean) that a person on the plane isn't allowed in the US. Then once they got back to Paris, armed police rushed onto the plane and everything was searched and torn apart from the plane to the luggage. All checked luggage was claimed and re-searched. They all had to go through security again. And then they put them back on the same plane which didn't go over well with many passengers.
To top it off, on our 40 mile trip home, we had to call 911 twice - once on a drunk driver who almost hit the concrete wall several times and kept swerving and speeding and slamming on his brakes and then 15 minutes later for a truck that was fully engulfed in flames after slamming a pole in the center median. I've never seen a vehicle on fire like this in my life. Unfortunately, no doors appeared to be open on the truck. :(
What a way to start the weekend.
Here is the Air France story from the Chicago Tribune (there are about 300+ other links to the story out on google too):
O'Hare landing for recalled flight
Name on no-fly list forced return to Paris
By Charles Sheehan
Tribune staff reporter
Published July 9, 2005, 6:35 AM CDT
Passengers on a Paris-to-Chicago flight Friday night said they knew something was wrong when they looked at their monitors tracking the flight path and realized the plane was making a 180-degree turn.
The flight, Air France Flight AF 050, was over the Atlantic when the crew was informed that U.S. authorities believed the airliner was carrying a passenger who was on the federal "no-fly" list.
Soon after, the flight crew announced over the plane's PA system that there were people aboard who would probably not be allowed into the United States, several passengers said after they had arrived at O'Hare International Airport around 2 a.m. Saturday.
No one on the plane panicked—even though the crew's announcement came just a day after the bombings in London, they said.
"We figured if they were telling us what they were doing, it couldn't be that bad. It was a relief actually," said Sue Graunke of Darien, who was returning home from a trip to Germany with her husband, Scott. The couple were among 291 passengers on board.
The man on the "no-fly" list was later identified as the brother of a lieutenant for Al Qaeda in Iraq chief Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, according to a senior law enforcement official. The man is not accused of any wrongdoing, but he was on the list, the official said.
The airliner returned to Paris' Charles de Gaulle Airport about 8 p.m., Paris time, more than four hours after its departure, and eventually took off again for Chicago, according to Air France.
Graunke and several other passengers said when the flight returned to Paris, 12 to 20 French security agents with firearms boarded the plane and went down the aisles to check passports. Several male passengers were escorted off the plane.
All the passengers were searched and then escorted off the plane so security agents could search the jet before allowing anyone to board again.
One passenger, Sam Radwan of Chicago, wondered how anyone on the "no-fly" list was allowed on the flight.
"Any amount of security would have kept these guys from walking through the door in the first place," Radwan said.
Standing in O'Hare's international terminal early Saturday, Dominique Mure, the captain of the flight, said four people were taken off the plane because one of them was on the "no-fly" list. All of them were later released by French officials, but they did not board the flight again, Mure said.
Air France officials could not be reached for comment late Friday.
Airlines usually do not allow passengers on the "no-fly" list to board flights to the United States.
That the plane was stopped well before it entered U.S. airspace was touted by Transportation Safety Administration officials as proof that extensive security measures put into place following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were working.
My step-mom and I were getting ready to pick them up when she decided to check the flight status online. She yells from the computer that they were delayed until 9pm. I go into the computer room and notice their plane left late from Paris, was out 25 minutes, and returned back to the airport (find out later they had landing gear problems or something). But then they left again, and returned back to Paris FOUR HOURS LATER! Plane problems we assumed.... but that seems strange to land in the same airport four hours later. We all decided that was weird, and watched as their new departure time kept getting pushed back further and further.
So my step-mom was starting to get restless and impatient, and my dad takes her out to dinner at a local sports bar. I meet them up there and we're finishing our dinner, and out of the corner of my eye I catch the Air France logo on the 6pm news and see the caption "Flight From Paris". I sprinted over to the big TV to try to hear, but missed the story. We all went into panic mode and rushed back to the house to check for more info.
My heart was racing 100 mph, and thank God we get back to the computer to see they have finally left (again). So we all were able to breathe a sign of relief. Then I do a google search, and we find out what's going on. Two hours into flight, the US denied the Air France flight access to land in the US due to a passenger on the federal "no-fly" list. So while over the Atlantic, they turned the plane around, landed back in Paris, the police pulled 4-5 men from the plane, and the plane was searched for bad stuff. Wow - that had to have been scary.
So with a new arrival time of 2am, we made our way up to O'Hare around 1am and it was like a circus in the International terminal. News crews and TV cameras and a bunch of uneasy people. We were definately glad to see Amanda and Tony walk through the doors around 2:30 am.
Amanda did a short news interview and made it onto the WGN news. Turns out the men were about two rows behind Amanda and Tony on the plane. The news reporters kept asking the ethnicity of the men, but being a Peace Corps type of person, she refused to make judgements or answer.
As you can imagine, it was pretty scary for them. They actually announced over the plane (as they were turning around over the ocean) that a person on the plane isn't allowed in the US. Then once they got back to Paris, armed police rushed onto the plane and everything was searched and torn apart from the plane to the luggage. All checked luggage was claimed and re-searched. They all had to go through security again. And then they put them back on the same plane which didn't go over well with many passengers.
To top it off, on our 40 mile trip home, we had to call 911 twice - once on a drunk driver who almost hit the concrete wall several times and kept swerving and speeding and slamming on his brakes and then 15 minutes later for a truck that was fully engulfed in flames after slamming a pole in the center median. I've never seen a vehicle on fire like this in my life. Unfortunately, no doors appeared to be open on the truck. :(
What a way to start the weekend.
Here is the Air France story from the Chicago Tribune (there are about 300+ other links to the story out on google too):
O'Hare landing for recalled flight
Name on no-fly list forced return to Paris
By Charles Sheehan
Tribune staff reporter
Published July 9, 2005, 6:35 AM CDT
Passengers on a Paris-to-Chicago flight Friday night said they knew something was wrong when they looked at their monitors tracking the flight path and realized the plane was making a 180-degree turn.
The flight, Air France Flight AF 050, was over the Atlantic when the crew was informed that U.S. authorities believed the airliner was carrying a passenger who was on the federal "no-fly" list.
Soon after, the flight crew announced over the plane's PA system that there were people aboard who would probably not be allowed into the United States, several passengers said after they had arrived at O'Hare International Airport around 2 a.m. Saturday.
No one on the plane panicked—even though the crew's announcement came just a day after the bombings in London, they said.
"We figured if they were telling us what they were doing, it couldn't be that bad. It was a relief actually," said Sue Graunke of Darien, who was returning home from a trip to Germany with her husband, Scott. The couple were among 291 passengers on board.
The man on the "no-fly" list was later identified as the brother of a lieutenant for Al Qaeda in Iraq chief Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, according to a senior law enforcement official. The man is not accused of any wrongdoing, but he was on the list, the official said.
The airliner returned to Paris' Charles de Gaulle Airport about 8 p.m., Paris time, more than four hours after its departure, and eventually took off again for Chicago, according to Air France.
Graunke and several other passengers said when the flight returned to Paris, 12 to 20 French security agents with firearms boarded the plane and went down the aisles to check passports. Several male passengers were escorted off the plane.
All the passengers were searched and then escorted off the plane so security agents could search the jet before allowing anyone to board again.
One passenger, Sam Radwan of Chicago, wondered how anyone on the "no-fly" list was allowed on the flight.
"Any amount of security would have kept these guys from walking through the door in the first place," Radwan said.
Standing in O'Hare's international terminal early Saturday, Dominique Mure, the captain of the flight, said four people were taken off the plane because one of them was on the "no-fly" list. All of them were later released by French officials, but they did not board the flight again, Mure said.
Air France officials could not be reached for comment late Friday.
Airlines usually do not allow passengers on the "no-fly" list to board flights to the United States.
That the plane was stopped well before it entered U.S. airspace was touted by Transportation Safety Administration officials as proof that extensive security measures put into place following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were working.