It doesn’t matter what color your skin is, what your name is, or what your religion is. Air Canada will still treat you like shit.
Until last year I’d never even heard of Air Canada, and now every time anybody mentions them all I hear is how terrible they are.
As a Canadian, I’d just like to say Air Canada makes BA look like a luxury airline.
I remember when British Airways used to actually be posh. If you were flying with BA you’d made it.
Well despite how far it’s fallen, it’s still up on Air Canada. Their business model is running flights as a cover for taking as much government funding as they can get.
When I was still living in Canada and my now wife was here in the UK, we discovered that booking with Air Canada was $100-$300 cheaper in the UK than in Canada.
I have a friend named Fidel Castro. To fly from Canada to Costa Rica, his flight cannot have a connecting in the US. Is costly.
Apparently that name is not that uncommon for South Americans born shortly after the Cuban Revolution. First name that is. He just unlucky to also be a Castro. No relation.
The title is a bit clickbaity. He wasn’t stopped from boarding, he had to go through additional security checks. He claims he was told he had to go through the checks because his name was Mohammad… although that’s just him saying that.
I live in UK and I’d say around 50% of the flights I’ve taken to/from US I’ve been pulled aside for extra checks. Many times both on the way out and way back for a 100% check rate on that single trip.
If they did actually say it was due to his name being Mohammad then yeah that’s really bad, but this sounds like they’re making something of nothing. And at no point was he stopped from boarding.
It was completely unacceptable for a
member of this househuman being to be treated in this way.In absolutely no context does the name your parents gave you correlate to whether or not you’re a terrorist.
Tell that to airport security.
I think the problem is terrorist watch lists based only on first/last name combos. If you have a common name, particularly a male Middle Eastern name, then your name is likely shared by someone on a terrorism watch list.
The problem is that means these people are harassed every time they try to travel. We need at least one other piece of identifying information, not just first/last, so it’s quick to exclude all the false positives.
To play Devil’s advocate, yes it does. That’s how statistical association works. More Muslims are terrorists, and most Mohammad’s are Muslim. Israel’s airport uses profiling like this and it’s one of the safest, most efficient airports in the world. The West is grappling with what to do with this. We could be safer if we also employed profiling, but we don’t like it for moral reasons.
FYI Mohammed is the third most popular name on the planet
And by no means unheard of in Canada
Wait I thought it was the most popular first name?
- Maria 2. Nushi 3. Mohammed
I’ve literally never met anyone named Nushi lol. Where are they hiding?
India, I assume.
Nope, never met anyone with that name
Sources say it’s of Hindi origin, but when I actually checked the statistics, it says there’s only 130 people in India with the name, while there’s ~56 million in China. So it seems to be mostly a Chinese name. Although further googling seems to indicate that’s the Chinese name for “Mrs.”… so it might be that these sources are reading the title field as the first name, lol.
And Smith is the most common last name. So statistically speaking most people are called Maria Smith
Only in the US. Internationally, the most common last name is Wang:
Wang is a patronymic (ancestral) name that means “king” in Mandarin, and it’s shared by more than 92 million people in China, making it the most popular last name in the world. The reason it’s so populous today may have a lot to do with the fact that many royal families changed their name to Wang when their kingdoms fell under the first Qin dynasty emperor. This was both to preserve their status and protect themselves from assassination.
SourceSo Mohammed Wang is the most common name in the world.
It’s Wang. There are 92 million people with that surname in China, and a few more in other countries.
Oh. Well I guess that means we need to try harder.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
An MP was stopped from boarding a flight to Canada with other members of parliament “because his name was Mohammad”, the Commons heard on Monday.
Mohammad Yasin, Labour’s MP for Bedford, was due to fly to Canada with other MPs from the Commons levelling up, housing and communities committee when he was delayed for questioning “for a considerable period” at airports in both countries last week.
Clive Betts, the chair of the committee, said the incident was unacceptable because of its “racist and Islamophobic nature”, and that he would write to the Canadian high commissioner in the UK.
Yasin then underwent similar questioning from officials on his return trip to the UK, MPs were told.
On return at Toronto airport on the way back, he was again challenged and got on his flight with the assistance of my consul general, who was very helpful.”
The deputy speaker Roger Gale replied: “I am sure that the whole house will share the dismay at the treatment of the member for Bedford.
The original article contains 443 words, the summary contains 169 words. Saved 62%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
