Flight Delayed After Woman Thinks Professor Doing Math Is A Terrorist

Story out of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania:

A University of Pennsylvania economics professor who was scribbling math while waiting on a plane for his Philadelphia-to-Syracuse flight to take off on Thursday evening apparently triggered paranoia in a fellow passenger, causing a flight delay of more than two hours.

Guido Menzio - who has dark, curly hair and wears glasses, according to his Penn faculty web photo - was on the scheduled 7:20 p.m. American Airlines flight 3950 to Syracuse.

He said he was told that a fellow passenger thought he was a "terrorist." Menzio is Italian, and according to his web page, had won the Carlo Alberto Medal for Best Italian Economist Under 40 last year.

In a social media post, Menzio wrote that the woman who had been sitting next to him on the plane had passed a note to a flight attendant, and when the attendant returned, she asked the woman if she was comfortable taking off or was "too sick."

Menzio noted that the plane then returned to the gate and the woman sitting next to him left her seat.

He was then asked by the pilot to get off the plane, and at that point, he was "met by some FBI looking man-in-black," he wrote in his post.

After first being asked about the woman who had been sitting next to him, Menzio said he was then told that the woman "thought I was a terrorist because I was writing strange things on a pad of paper. I laugh. I bring them back to the plane. I showed them my math." Cont.

Story from - Philly.com
Image from - Jes - Flickr
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