Paranoid Authorities Wouldn't Let Me Fly My Plane Over U.S. Territory - Was It Something I Wrote? [View All]

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Paranoid Authorities Wouldn't Let My Plane Fly Over U.S. Territory -- Was It Something I Wrote?

By Hernando Calvo Ospina , Progreso-Weekly. Posted May 4, 2009.

An AirFrance flight was forced to divert a plane thousands of miles because a journalist was considered a national security threat.

Air France Flight 438, from Paris, was to land at Mexico City at 6 p.m. on Saturday, April 18. Five hours before landing, the captain's voice announced that U.S. authorities had prohibited the plane from flying over U.S. territory. The explanation: among the passengers aboard was a person who was not welcome in the United States for reasons of national security.

A few minutes later, the same voice told the startled passengers that the plane was heading for Fort-de-France, Martinique, because the detour the plan needed to take to reach its destination was too long and the fuel was insufficient.

- snip -

Again in the air, and preparing for another four hours of travel, a man who identified himself as the copilot came to me. Trying to look discreet, he asked if I was "Mr. Calvo Ospina." I told him yes.

"The captain wants to sleep, that's why I came here," he said, and he invited me to accompany him to the back of the plane. There, he told me that I was the person "responsible" for the detour. I was astonished.

My first reaction was to ask him: "Do you think I'm a terrorist?" He said no, that's the reason I'm telling you this. He also assured me that it was strange that this was the first time it happened on an Air France plane. Shortly before we landed in Martinique, a stewardess had told me that, in her 11-year career, nothing like that had ever happened to her.

Finally, the copilot asked me not to tell anybody, including the rest of the crew. I assured him that I hadn't the slightest intention of doing so.

- snip -

How far will the U.S. authorities' paranoia go? And why do Air France and the French authorities continue to keep silent about it all?

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