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Home / Travel

Two women complain about 'terrorist' Muslim passengers. Guess who gets kicked off?

NZ Herald
15 Jul, 2019 02:20 AM3 mins to read

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Hands up who doesn't know that Turkey is a Muslim country. None of you? Some of you?

Two women were thrown off a Thomas Cook flight from Turkey to Gatwick over the weekend after they allegedly claimed three Muslim men in thawb or thobe (also called the dishdasha in Oman or the kandourah in the United Arab Emirates) were "terrorists" and a "threat" to the safety of the plane, other passengers have claimed.

Muslim men in thawb. Photo / Getty
Muslim men in thawb. Photo / Getty

a passenger on our Thomas Cook flight #MT105 from Dalaman to Gatwick refuses to board the plane because three bearded men in white prayer robes are on board. All passengers are united in anger against this crazy #racist woman. It's 2am #fedup

— Mario Van Poppel (@poppelmario) July 11, 2019
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Imagine refusing to fly because there are Muslim men on your flight... from TURKEY. 🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️ #MT105 https://t.co/lCnI9scIgu

— ቅዱስ (@KidusFekadu) July 15, 2019

Several passengers filmed videos of the incident, which took place at 1am on Friday local time. The above video shows one of the women, believed to be British, removing her bag and arguing with passengers before being escorted off the plane by police.

The flight from Dalaman to Gatwick was delayed by well over an hour.

Mario Van Poppel, a Belgian father on the flight, said the woman was a "crazy racist".

London woman Shanea Kerry laid out how it all went down in the Twitter thread.

"When boarding, the two women began to act 'distressed' and began to pace up and down the plane.

"They went to the front of the plane, spoke to the flight attendants and attempted to get the three men removed by stating that they are 'disgusting" and 'a threat'.

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"Apparently they screamed a lot worse about them but we were at the back of the plane when this was happening so I won't quote it!

"When the woman in the video above came back to get her bags, abuse was just flying around the plane - quite a few people called her out for the racism. she was calling passengers & the 3 men in particular all sorts of nasty names "

"I then called her out for her racism and highlighted her stupidity in flying to a country rooted in Islamic values then discriminating against Muslims.

"She then called me a 'fat b****'."

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In a statement, Thomas Cook told The Mirror: "Two passengers on flight MT105 from Dalaman to London Gatwick were removed from the aircraft by police following offensive behaviour on board.

"The safety of our customers and crew is always our first priority and we do not accept this kind of behaviour on our aircraft. We are sorry to our customers for the delay this caused to their flight."

Kerry isn't convinced the airline did enough.

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