A wing and a prayer
A wing and a prayer:
by Brian Whitaker
Planes are kept aloft by aerodynamics, not divine intervention. I have often travelled on planes next to Christians who crossed themselves or Muslims who whispered a prayer before take-off. It happens in all faiths, so the reaction of a Canadian airline to a Jewish man who prayed in his seat seems both bizarre and insensitive: he was thrown off the plane.
"He was clearly a Hasidic Jew," said Yves Faguy, a passenger seated nearby. "He had some sort of cover over his head. He was reading from a book. "He wasn't exactly praying out loud but he was lurching back and forth," Faguy added. The action didn't seem to bother anyone, Faguy said, but a flight attendant approached the man and told him his praying was making other passengers nervous. "The attendant actually recognised out loud that he wasn't a Muslim and that she was sorry for the situation but they had to ask him to leave," Faguy said.
A spokeswoman for the airline, Air Canada Jazz, said later there had been more than one complaint about the man's behaviour and that the crew had acted "in the interest of the majority of passengers". Whether the passengers' alleged nervousness had anything to do with terrorism is unclear - though Jazz does seem extremely hot on security. So much so that one of its pilots was locked out of his own cockpit last month after going to the toilet.