Good article, though I wrote to the author that I think he should have included the info on Roffman missing his original flight. The GA knew that, but they still got lumped together as if they were a single party.
On this point, I agree with the author. I found myself lost in the details of R’s original flight and the long TSA lines and I had to backtrack several times to pick up the flow of the story.
You included R's original flight as “proof” that the two boys should not have been treated as a single traveling party, but this is very weak evidence. If, in fact, the boys had been involved in some nefarious plot, they could have planned to “accidentally” get on the same flight at the last minute. Or they could have been good friends who bumped into each other in the airport and R changed flights so they could fly together. R’s last-minute flight change is less relevant than the fact that the FA didn’t ask either R or S whether there is anyone else in their party before escorting S off the plane (at least based on the reported conversations).
These details distract the reader from the more important point: Even if R
had originally planned to be on this flight, and even if the boys
did know each other from Cleveland, and even if they happened to be heading towards the same east coast yeshiva… the FA and pilot should not have removed S from the plane simply because they were annoyed with or suspicious of R.
When you start with a good argument, you don’t strengthen it by including a lot of weak evidence.
