Thrown Off a United Airlines Flight for Taking Pictures
Yes, it's unfortunate that the flight attendant lied in this situation.<p>However, it would have been impossible for the pilot to verify this - even if the author showed him the camera. Since the author was willing to 'prove' it, it had to be a digital camera - which the author could have very easily used the built-in delete function to remove all photos but one (or be a sneaky terrorist and swap SD cards).<p>In addition, the author made the statement "I am not a terrorist." There's no way for flight crew to know this to be true until the plane lands at its destination and you provably haven't blown it up, killed people on-board, or hijacked and redirected it to another location. There is absolutely zero value in making a declaration like that.<p>... In fact, I'd say there's negative value in making that statement. In a security conscious environment like an enclosed aircraft, it immediately escalates a situation from "photo-happy tourist or possible bad guy" to "higher probability bad guy or maybe making a political statement ... or just not very smart". It's also a (very small) step in the direction of yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater as you've potentially now caused (possibly over-sensitive) people hearing this statement to begin to have concerns about you and their flight. You've turned what should have been an uneventful flight into a situation where tension can only increase before you've even left the ground.<p>When you add all of this up, especially when a flight is trying to get out of the gate on time, the pilot is going to err on the side of caution and kick you off the plane.<p>You'll either blow up in a rage of righteous fury (thus proving to all that you should never have been on that plane) or you'll leave quietly, a one-time mistake, and board another flight (hopefully with much less bother to the next crew considering how much time you just wasted).<p>You were not kicked off for taking pictures. You were kicked off for acting odd.