New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s flight from San Francisco to Boston was delayed. Passengers who boarded the flight were forced to deplane after the flight returned to the gate.
Rumors swirled on social media that the governor played some role in the delay, which caused the governor’s campaign to push back against much of the gossip.
“Governor Christie, an aide and a member of his security detail were traveling on a United flight from San Francisco to Boston this morning when a passenger was removed from the plane before takeoff at the request of United Airlines,” said Maria Comella, a campaign spokesman, in a statement. “At no point did Governor Christie interact with this passenger nor did this passenger pose a verbal or physical threat to the Governor. Any other inquiries about this matter should be directed to United Airlines.”
What prompted the Christie campaign’s statement?
David Berlind, a man with a Twitter account, tweeted that a “passenger threatened #ChrisChristie” on his Friday flight, and that the passengers were then forced to deplane the flight. Berlind later tweeted that Christie was not threatened, and chose to spread another rumor, namely that Christie “saw a guy taking pics of crew & emailing them in Arabic.”
A blog named The RightScoop then aggregated Berlind’s tweets into a blogpost with the headline, “BREAKING: CHRIS CHRISTIE AIRPLANE HAD TO TURN AROUND OVER MAN TAKING PHOTOS OF CREW, EMAILING THEM IN ARABIC!”
But the blog concluded its post with a much less definitive statement, “[W]e know something happened.”
Several professional news organizations also spread the gossip without much, if any, verification. Blair Miller, a reporter at Fox 25 News in Boston, tweeted that a passenger told him “someone said something to Christie” and the passengers were subsequently forced off the plane.
The KTVU television station in the Bay Area, near the location from which the plane was departing, published an online story largely relying on info from Fox 25 in Boston.
KTVU also tweeted that the San Francisco airport’s “spokesman says @Chris Christie was threatened on a UA flight from SFO to Boston.”
Doug Yakel, the airport’s spokesman, told the Washington Examiner that KTVU’s tweet was inaccurate. Yakel said the plane returned to the gate after a male passenger taking pictures of the flight crew caused some concern.
KTVU has a poor reputation of reporting breaking news accurately, having been snookered into reporting the fake names of pilots onboard a plane that crashed in 2013.
Yakel also said that he saw tweets about a passenger emailing in Arabic, but Yakel said he had no knowledge of this happening.
The Christie campaign’s statement indicated he was not threatened, and the airport’s spokesman said it could not confirm whether the governor was the source of the complaint that caused the flight to return to the gate. Neither Christie nor the airport spokesman have reported any “Arabic” connection to the flight’s problems.
The recent Islamic terrorist attacks in Paris, France, appear to have travelers on edge ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday. Spotting a presidential candidate onboard a flight might seem newsworthy — NBC News published a double-bylined story titled, “Carly Fiorina spotted at Newark Airport” — but separating fact from fiction is important this holiday season.
