> I don't find it surprising whatsoever that United Airlines does not want him flying on their planes.
This is more a function of the airlines just being stupid though. There was a case where an Arabic family was taken off of an airplane because on of the teenagers asked how safe it was to sit in a seat next to the wing. The FBI cleared them, but the airline refused to allow them back on a plane.
Robert's exact statement was, "Find myself on a 737/800, lets see Box-IFE-ICE-SATCOM, ? Shall we start playing with EICAS messages? "PASS OXYGEN ON" Anyone ? :)"
I.E. He was talking about directly interfering with the planes EICAS system. What if he'd joked about running a GPS, or VOR (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VHF_omnidirectional_range) jammer during final approach? At what point do the authorities decide they need to have a conversation with such an individual?
The issue is that the authorities did have a talk with him, but the airlines have deemed that the authorities' assurances are inadequate. That was the portion of the example that I was referring to. The airlines have said "FBI says this guy is ok? Screw that, don't let him on anyways!"
This is more a function of the airlines just being stupid though. There was a case where an Arabic family was taken off of an airplane because on of the teenagers asked how safe it was to sit in a seat next to the wing. The FBI cleared them, but the airline refused to allow them back on a plane.