Royal Arab Idiots
I'm all for cultural sensitivity, but there is a boundary between what's right and what's just silly. The Arabs who were recently booted from a British Airways plane certainly crossed the line into silliness.
Three Arab princesses from the Qatar royal family were sitting next to male strangers. Two of their male entourage members complained about the seating arrangements, saying that it is against their culture for women to mingle with males outside of their family. As silly as I think it is, it's generally a good idea to be sensitive to the cultural needs of passengers when they don't negatively impact others. The problem is, the plane had already taxied out to the runway before the men complained. As a result, the flight was delayed for almost three hours before the idiots were finally booted off.
If you have cultural issues that you need to take into consideration when making seating arrangements somewhere, then doesn't it make sense to get it sorted when you reserve your seats? Waiting until after the show is on the road is inconsiderate to the majority of other customers. And still, if it was such a crisis for the women to be sitting next to male strangers, then why did their lackeys not complain sooner? Why didn't the princesses complain as soon as they found themselves in the situation?
Another thing that makes this particular group of people look silly is the fact that the princesses had traveled from Qatar to Milan to shop for a day. In other words, they spent the day wandering around stores where they must have been around male customers and male clerks at some point. And it just seems to me to be a tad bit hypocritical to come and shop in a foreign country and then make a stink about a cultural nuance you failed to tell anyone about beforehand. If they couldn't bother to make the proper arrangements to satisfy their cultural nitpicks, they should have just stayed in their seats and kept their mouths shut. Idiots.