Having been inundated with emails from readers about some harebrained story about 11 “Muslim-looking” people boarding an AirTran flight in Houston, we reached out to our friend Tad Hutcheson, VP of marketing for AirTran, and he confirmed that the viral email is a hoax.
The story appeared in a blog on the web site for Project 9.12, a group started by Fox News commentator Glenn Beck, and the fake story was picked up and distributed by the media and blogs, and of course, viral e-mailers.
Here’s the lead into the post refuting the story on AirTran’s internal site:
“After conducting additional research into this situation, we have verified, according to flight manifests (legally binding documents) that the individual that allegedly created a first-hand account of events on-board AirTran Airways flight 297, a Theodore Petruna, was never actually on-board the flight.”
Here’s the full post from AirTran:
http://www.insideairtran.com/?p=2200
Here’s the most recent story in the AJC about it:
http://www.ajc.com/business/airtran-hero-wasn-t-226517.html
It’s not *completely* a hoax, although there’s clearly some exaggeration going on here: http://www.snopes.com/politics/religion/flight297.asp
Thanks, Scott! Looks like we fell for a hoax, too! We’ve deleted reference to drudge, but the story still stands and it’s still a hoax!
Um, drudge.com is NOT the Drudge Report….it’s a copycat site called Drudge Retort (see it’s title) aimed at getting site hits away from the original Drudge. There’s a big difference.