TRAIL OF TERROR

Are officials hiding details in hijacking 'dry run'?

Airline silent on witness' testimony of mock shootings aboard plane

Posted: December 06, 2009
2:20 am Eastern
Michael Carl
© 2009 WorldNetDaily


Dr. Keith Robinson

Testimony of a passenger in the gate of Nov. 17 AirTran Flight 297 suggests the airline may be deliberately leaving out key details of an onboard incident that affirm widespread speculation the flight was the subject of a "dry run" by Muslim terrorists.

Dr. Keith Robinson, a Houston, Texas, chaplain who occasionally works through the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, told WND he is standing by his written account of the incident, which includes testimony that a passenger told him Arabic men sang, danced and pretended to shoot the other passengers before the plane was returned to the gate.

None of these details have been addressed in AirTran's account of what happened aboard Flight 297.

As WND reported, an e-mailed account of an incident aboard the flight bound from Atlanta to Houston told of a dozen Arabic men causing a disturbance aboard the jet as it taxied to the runway, ultimately prompting pilots to return to the gate.

The author of the e-mail, Tedd Petruna of Houston, created a media and Internet firestorm with his account of what happened on the plane:

"If this wasn't a dry run, I don't know what one is. The terrorists wanted to see how TSA would handle it, how the crew would handle it, and how the passengers would handle it," he wrote. "I'm telling this to you because I want you to know. … The threat is real. I saw it with my own eyes."

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Since then, AirTran has released a line-by-line rebuttal of Petruna's email, in which it further asserts that according to flight manifests, Petruna wasn't even aboard the flight he claimed to witness.

The official version of the Transportation Security Administration says that the plane returned to the gate because an unruly passenger refused to end a cell phone conversation.

Robinson's testimony, however, suggests there is more to the story.

Robinson, who was in the gate watching his plane presumably leave without him, says the jet then returned after a 30-minute wait, and a number of passengers and airline employees were visibly upset.

"Over the next 30 minutes officials from AirTran started arriving at the gate, flashing their badges and going down to the plane," Robinson said. "After 6-7 officials exited the door, suddenly it flew open and 12-15 people from the flight hurried off the plane. Anger and fear was etched on their faces as they jerked their carry-ons and tore into their computer bags to schedule another flight out of Atlanta."

Robinson spoke with a passenger who had gotten off AirTran Flight 297, and the passenger said a number of Middle Eastern men had made a scene on the plane.

"One gentleman confronted the gate agent demanding his luggage be removed from the flight. As I spoke to him, he related that when Flight 297 left the concourse the first time, it began taxiing to take off. Then approximately 12 men of Middle Eastern appearance stood up and began dancing and singing in an Arabic dialect," the chaplain relates.

"They refused to be seated when directed to do so by the flight attendants. Then, the singing stopped and some of the men took out their cell phones and began taking pictures of the other individual passengers. Again, the men were ordered to be seated by the flight crew and refused while continuing to take their pictures. Next, the deâ€