If you want your every religious dictate respected by the airline, I guess you'll just have to take some of your cash and start your own.

A Qatar sheik held up a British Airways flight at MilanÂ’s Linate airport for nearly three hours after discovering three of his female relatives had been seated next to men they did not know.

When none of the other business class passengers agreed to swap seats, the sheik, a member of QatarÂ’s ruling family, went to the pilot, who had already started the engine, to complain, an airport official said.

But the pilot ordered him and his traveling companions, the three women, two men, a cook and a servant, off the plane.

Some requests are reasonable. Demanding that other passengers be inconvenienced for your convenience is not. After all, reserving the seats in advance wouldn't have been so hard, would it? Or maybe you could have flown coach?

But if you want Islamic law imposed on airline flights, maybe you need your own airline.

UPDATE: This story is even worse than it initially sounded.

After passengers had fastened their seat-belts and the plane had taxied on to the runway, two male passengers in the entourage got up to protest about where the women were sitting.

According to the customs of Qatar and other Gulf states, women are not allowed to mix with men who are not relatives.

Cabin crew tried to rearrange the seats but passengers travelling together refused to give up their allotted places. The captain tried to mediate but after more than two and a half hours of wrangling he ordered the bulk of their royal party off the plane.

It is understood that five of the eight - including the princesses and the men who left their seats to protest - were removed.

So it appears that not only were did they demand that their views be accommodated, but they demanded that other passengers be seriously inconvenienced to make that accommodation. After all, they wanted to break up families and other parties traveling together to meet their convenience needs for their afternoon shopping trip. As it was, nearly half of those on the plane missed connecting flights because the captain took as long as he did trying to reach a compromise. A better solution would have been to give them 30 seconds to sit down, shut up, and and fly in their assigned seats -- or hump it back to Qatar by camel.

Posted by: Greg at 03:53 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 424 words, total size 3 kb.