I witnessed something on a flight that almost looked like it was from a movie, but I am not sure what to think. I am curious if any OMAAT readers can help satisfy my curiosity. Work backwards.
The international flight arrived on time.
Ford and I flew from Mexico to Dallas on American Eagle. We had to clear US immigration on arrival, so after a routine flight we pulled into a gate at the international concourse at DFW.
The person is departing from the airport.
Everyone stood up when the sign went off. When the door opened, the flight attendant told someone on the jet bridge that everyone would be seated. He asked the passenger to go to the front of the plane with all of her belongings.
She was seated in the front of the economy class, behind us in the back of first class. She walked off the plane immediately, and 30 seconds later everyone else was told they could disembark.
I think the woman was at least 25 years old, had an American accent, and had a lot of money, or at least that is what Ford tells me. When she was paged, she walked off calmly and quickly, almost as if she knew someone was waiting for her.
There is more to the story.
I can't remember the number of times I've seen immigration officers meet a plane and look for a specific person. The passenger who was removed from the plane stood out to us before all of this happened.
She was in the Priority Pass lounge at the airport and talking to two other people who I had assumed were her friends. It is possible that the friends traveled together and took different flights home.
Priority Pass lounge at the airport.
I didn't get the full context since I wasn't intending to listen in, but she was talking about the job she had not being worth it. She was a few feet from me in the lounge, which is just the size of a closet.
What happened during boarding was not normal. She was talking on her phone while seated behind us, and it was difficult to not hear part of her call. She was telling someone on the other end to transfer money in a way that sounded like business, as opposed to asking a family member for money.
We became friendly with the woman seated across from us, and in the immigration hall the woman said to us, "she was talking about money, so she heard the same thing we did."
I would be willing to bet that she wasn't just getting a transfer, she was getting more than that, like a flight attendant asking her to come to the front of the plane with her belongings. What explanations do you have for that?
Immigration gets tipped off on things, so what are they looking for? They usually look for people who aren't legally allowed to enter the country, people with warrants out for their arrest, and people who are human traffickers.
She had a US passport, so this was not about her right to enter the country. I don't think she was traffickers because she appeared to be traveling alone. The phone call after she boarded her flight to the United States may be one of the other reasons.
The bottom line.
I was curious about what was going on after someone arrived on my flight from Mexico to the US. If it weren't for what happened on arrival, I wouldn't have thought about the call we heard after boarding about her requesting someone transfer money. The situation became even stranger when it clicked.
What was going on here? I don't think there's a way to look up arrests that happened at DFW on a particular day.
