NorthWest Airlines flight returns to Amsterdam due to suspicious passenger activity

It appears that a NorthWest airlines flight, departing Amsterdam for India, was turned back following reports that 12 passengers were acting suspiciously.

Police arrested 12 of the 149 passengers on flight 42 to Mumbai, which turned back to Amsterdam due to security concerns after the crew reported suspicious behaviour, officials said. Two Dutch fighter jets accompanied the plane back to Schiphol.

Dutch media cited eyewitnesses saying those arrested were not following airline security rules and were exchanging mobile phones which had made other passengers uneasy.

"They were not paying attention to what the flight attendents were saying," an unnamed female passenger said on NOS television.

Source

People are obviously jumpy at the moment with airline travel. If the report is correct, mobile phone exchanging does seem a tad strange, and obviously caused people's panic threshold to be broken. I'd be interested to hear what your threshold of concern is. When would you alert a flight attendant or other passengers that you are worried something is going on?

And if not paying attention to flight attendants is above that threshold, most flights here in Australia wouldn't get off the ground!

Edit - Grammar, and end quip about paying attention

[edit on 23-8-2006 by Willard856]

Well, exchanging cell phones is hardly grounds for panic.

But refusing to listen to the flight attendant and ignoring her instructions and doing whatever, yeah, I can see how that would make people jittery. It depends. Was the flight attendant specifically telling these guys to do something, and they were blowing her off or ignoring her? if so, I can undertsand why they turned back. It has little to do with terrorist threats, and more to do with unruly passengers who could be a danger to themselves and others by not following instructions or making the flight unpleasant for everyone else. Add to this fact the major international freak out about terrorism.