Air Canada confusion - are the passengers lying?
Their words say a lot
A story caught my eye this week. According to reports, several passengers found themselves thrown off a flight from Montreal to London without being given a reason for their expulsion.
This article sums up the confusion in the story and contains quotes from affected passengers.
It feels like one of those “more to this than meets the eye” stories. People don’t get thrown off flights without being given a warning and then a reason, do they? Well, strange and unpredictable things do happen. So, is the truth in the words of the passengers?
I’ll look at their words with the knowledge that people don’t like to lie. Lying is hard. Instead, people will bend, distort and conceal the truth to give a deceptive impression. So, do I detect deception, or do I detect straightforward truth?
Let’s break it down
First up, a 71-year-old who was ejected with his wife.
We wore our masks all the time in the airport and on the plane after we went on board. The only contact we had with the stewards was when they welcomed us in the normal way. We had waited for about an hour for the plane to take off when a member of staff with a list of numbers came along looking up and down the rows.
The way he talks about mask wearing is overly complex. Why did he feel the need to add that complexity? He could have said, “we wore our masks all the time” and stopped there. However, he felt the need to qualify that with where they wore the masks: “in the airport and on the plane”. If he had stopped there, I’d be fine too, but he adds the strange “on the plane after we went on board”. That is wording you’d use if you didn’t have a mask on before you boarded and as you went on board.
Anyone telling me that things were “normal” gets my attention. In studying deceptive words, I’ve noticed that people will be at pains to say how normal something was to hide how far from normal it truly was. He says that was the only contact they had with “stewards”. That could be his shorthand for most airline staff, but we haven’t explicitly heard him say that he didn’t have contact with, say, security staff or even non-airline staff.
Removed
They started looking at the seat numbers and earlier removed two young girls from three or four rows in front of us. Then they pointed at us, and told the police with them to remove us. We were totally flabbergasted. We had just been sitting in our seats normally with our masks on and looking forward to getting underway.
These words don’t flow. They skip in time and action. He said, “they started” doing something, then goes back in time to talk about something they did “earlier”. This non-linear story telling can be an indication of deception.
The final sentence in this paragraph features three deceptive indicators. That’s a lot. He says they had “just” been sitting. “Just” often appears in deception, when I see it want to know what else they were doing that is being hidden with “just”. We see “normally” again, and then masks are mentioned once more.
Why mention masks again? Well, it’s given to him later as one of the possible reasons he was thrown off the flight. Why pick on only that one reason as he tells this story? Again, when masks appear in this man’s words, it sounds strange.
The chap who was sitting next to us was also ordered to leave. He had a blanket over himself and was asleep, but was woken up and told to get off. We were in total shock. I was assuming there must have been a problem with the paperwork or something. I was asking what it was all about and if I could speak to the Captain, but I was told that I would find out later. It was a nightmare scenario.
There’s more non-linear story telling here, the “chap” next to them was asked to leave twice.
He’s very vague on his assumption, so vague it makes every eventuality possible, “paperwork or something” covers a lot of ground. But, if you thought there was a issue with the paperwork, would the captain be the man to sort it out?
Bizarre
It was utterly bizarre because there was no noise or aggravation on the flight. As far as I could tell everyone was behaving properly, and we certainly were. We were taken off at the same time as three members of the Williams Formula 1 team who had friends left on board.
He says he finds it “bizarre” because there was “no noise or aggravation”, he doesn’t say it was bizarre he was thrown off a flight with no reason given. I think here he is trying to convey a sense that he may have been ejected because of the behaviour of others, but in doing so, he shows no anger about that or unfairness. Again, his words are oddly chosen.
What really annoyed us was the lack of communications and nobody telling us anything as we were led back into the terminal. We had to find our own way back to Departures and this woman came down to say that we may have been thrown off for alcohol abuse, not wearing masks or failing to obey regulations.
If you were thrown off a plane, when you had done nothing wrong and not been given any reason, would the really annoying thing be “lack of communications”? That would be annoying, but there would be many more annoying things. He later says they were being treated as terrorists, but it was “lack of communications” that was really annoying. I don’t believe that.
Also it’s not a general “lack of communication”, it’s only a “lack of communications… as we were led back into the terminal”. That implies there could have been communication at other times. This man is qualifying a lot of what he says. He wants his words to appear broad, but in reality they are quite narrow and specific.
Rubbish
It was all rubbish because we had done absolutely nothing wrong. We asked her for evidence but she could not give any. Nobody was drunk, and we were not aware of anyone abusing anyone or failing to obey instructions. We were treated as if we were terrorists. Air Canada appeared to wash their hands of us. We were not offered a hotel or food. We tried three hotels, but all were fully booked and we had to stay in the terminal.
This paragraph reveals a lot. First off, it contains the word “absolutely”. That word appears regularly in the words of deceptive people. Hearing “absolutely” doesn’t mean you are hearing a lie, but it should put you on guard for possible deception.
In that man’s words, instead of claiming innocence, instead of being outraged at being accused of wrongdoing, he asked for “evidence”. This doesn’t reassure me that he’s done nothing wrong. His primary focus is on there being no evidence, not that there was no wrongdoing.
The woman gave three reasons why they may have been removed from the flight, “alcohol abuse, not wearing masks or failing to obey instructions”. The man appears to refute those accusations when he says, “Nobody was drunk, and we were not aware of anyone abusing anyone or failing to obey instructions”.
Look carefully at his words, and you’ll see two things. He doesn’t talk about himself specifically, he’s widened his references to talk about a larger group of people with words like “nobody”, “we” and “anyone”. He also deals with alcohol and regulations, but doesn’t mention masks at all.
Closing in
I feel I’m getting closer to what has happened. Let’s take a brief look at the words of another passenger who was removed from the flight.
The next row in front of us was also removed, and that included a couple that was in their 70s. At that point I was completely shocked. We had no idea what to make of what was happening,
Here he doesn’t say he doesn’t know why. He says he was shocked he says he had no idea what to make of it. Never that he didn’t know why.
Then the Air Canada attendant pointed at our row, and he told us we needed to leave as well.
We showed our masks, N95s, and I said to her, 'Does this look like the kind of mask someone would wear if they were refusing to wear a mask?'
As with the other man, the words around masks are odd. Why did he have to show his mask if he was wearing it? It would already be visible.
Why the need to show a mask at all? Well, that would be because they knew the reason they were being thrown off the plane was to do with mask wearing.
He thinks he’s landed a zinger with “does this look like the kind of mask someone would wear if they were refusing to wear a mask”. However, no mask would look like the sort of mask a refuser would wear because they wouldn’t wear one.
Also, it’s not proof of anything. A beaten up twenty-year-old car doesn’t look like the kind of car a millionaire would drive, but it doesn’t prove a millionaire isn’t driving it.
Conclusion
The second man’s words indicate explicitly that masks were the issue here, and they knew it.
Both men try to show a sense of confusion over what was happening, but neither say they didn’t know why they were removed from the plane. Go back and check their words, they express shock and disbelief over what happened but don’t explicitly say they don’t know the reason.
They also don’t say they asked why they were being ejected. That’s not to say they didn’t ask why, it is to say they don’t tell us, probably to avoid having to tell us the answer.
In both men’s words, there are indications that they weren’t wearing masks at some point on board the plane.
It’s in the words, these people were thrown off the plane for failing to adhere to the mask rules, and they know it. Their shock and confusion is over the fact they were thrown off the flight, not the reason why they were thrown off the flight.
The airline staff may have been overzealous, or the passengers could have been unreasonable, but there is no confusion as to the reason they were removed from the flight. Masks.
