Inside the Beltway

• Article
• Comments ()
• Click-2-Listen

By

Senate advisory

One never knows, but Sen. Evan Bayh, Indiana Democrat, might have witnessed a terrorist incident gone awry last month after he boarded American Airlines Flight 4784, scheduled to depart Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport for New York.

A member of the Select Committee on Intelligence, Mr. Bayh had settled into his seat in the middle of the plane as the flight crew prepared to shut the main cabin door and begin taxiing toward the runway.

Suddenly, after one of the pilots announced strict security measures in place for flights leaving Reagan -- passengers are forbidden to leave their seats 30 minutes after departure or before landing -- a man described by one passenger as being of Middle Eastern descent leapt from his seat and shouted to a flight attendant that he'd forgotten an item at the airport's security checkpoint.

The flight attendant, the passenger says, tried to prevent the man from deplaning, but he grabbed a piece of carry-on luggage and disappeared -- never to be seen again.

"[A] man jumped up from his seat and ran off the plane, saying that he had left something behind," confirms Meg Keck, the senator's spokeswoman. "There was some initial confusion over whether or not the passenger returned to the plane.

"Other passengers spoke with the flight crew to inform them that the man had not returned to his seat," Ms. Keck adds, "which prompted the crew to evacuate the plane as a safety precaution."

Mr. Bayh, meanwhile, quickly made his presence known to the flight crew, arguing that the plane's luggage also should be removed and reinspected for explosives -- "that it could be a danger," Ms. Keck says.

"The airline did so, and after a few hours' delay the plane was allowed to fly on to New York," she says, where the senator was to make a connecting flight to Israel.