SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY Passengers removed from flight after watching news report

Posted on 11/18/2015

Four people who appeared to be of 'Middle Eastern descent' were removed from a Chicago-bound flight in Maryland after a passenger alerted a flight attendant to their 'suspicious activity'. They were later released without charges.

The passengers were removed from Spirit Airlines Flight 969 at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport on Tuesday morning after one was observed watching a news report on his phone. That ‘suspicious activity’ caused the passenger next to him 'some concern', Maryland Transportation Authority Police 1st Sgt Jonathan Green said. The plane was taxiing to the runway when the flight crew decided to return to the gate and the captain asked police to remove three men and a woman from the plane, Green said.

All passengers were removed from the plane, which had been scheduled to leave at 6am, for a time, Spirit Airlines spokesman Stephen Schuler said in a statement. Once the Transportation Security Administration cleared the plane and luggage for a second time, the flight departed for Chicago's O'Hare International Airport after 9am, according to Schuler. All four of the removed passengers were released without charges after a few hours, Green said.

He described them as a husband, wife and relative travelling together and a third man who was sitting near them. Green said he did not know whether they decided to continue their journey. Other passengers said the woman and three men appeared to be of Middle Eastern descent and that security officials who came aboard said there was a 'credible security threat', ABC reported.

David Rocca told The Associated Press in a telephone interview that he and fellow passengers were told that security officials would come on the plane and that they should stay seated. The 28-year-old Baltimore man said two men and a woman were taken off the flight first and that they took their carry-on bags off as well. He said officials returned to remove the fourth person, a man.

“They quietly stood up, removed their bags and followed the two officers off the plane,” Rocca said. Rocca said the early-morning flight was about half-full. He said he was among half a dozen passengers who also were taken off the flight because they had connecting flights in Chicago that they would miss.

On Tuesday afternoon, Chicago police cleared an unattended bag at O'Hare Airport and found that it posed no threat, according to the city's aviation department. The bomb squad was called in to investigate the piece of luggage at Terminal 3, which is used by American Airlines, but the building was not evacuated. However travellers were kept from the area while an officer in a bomb suit searched the bag. The bag was cleared and all lanes of traffic will be opened, according to the aviation department's Twitter feed.