Praying passenger removed from flight
Orthodox Jewish man ignored flight crew instructions during religious
ritual
updated 5:22 p.m. PT, Thurs., April. 17, 2008
NEW YORK - A passenger who left his seat to pray in the back of a plane
before it took off, ignoring flight attendants' orders to return, was
removed by an air****t security guard, a witness and the airline said.
The Orthodox Jewish man, who wore a full beard, a black hat and a long
black
coat, stood near the lavatories and began saying his prayers while the
United Airlines jet was being boarded at John F. Kennedy International
Air****t on Wednesday night, fellow passenger Ori Brafman said.
When flight attendants urged the man, who was carrying a religious book,
to
take his seat, he ignored them, Brafman said. Two friends, who were
seated,
tried to tell the attendants that the man couldn't stop until his prayers
were over in about 2 minutes, he said.
"He doesn't respond to them, but his friends explain that once you start
praying you can't stop," said Brafman, who was seated three rows away.
When the man finally stopped praying, he explained that he couldn't
interrupt his religious ritual and wasn't trying to be rude. But the
attendants summoned a guard to remove him, said Brafman, a writer who had
been visiting New York to talk to publishers.
The plane, Flight 9 to San Francisco, took off without the man. It landed
at
its destination as scheduled, Brafman said by telephone from his home
there.
Robin Urbanski, a spokeswoman for United Airlines, a subsidiary of UAL
Corp.
with headquarters in Chicago, confirmed the man was taken off the plane
and
put on another flight Thursday morning.
Urbanksi said flights cannot depart if all passengers are not in their
seats, which risks a delay, and it is im****tant that passengers listen to
the instructions of the flight crew.
The ****t Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs area air****ts,
and
the Trans****tation Safety Administration, which handles air****t security,
said Thursday they weren't involved in the incident.
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