Journalist Going to Nicaragua Causes Flight to be Diverted

There are several other accounts of the story online, and blurbs in the French press (all derived from Ospina’s tale or his friend’s original account for “Rue 89”). Some use this heading or variations on it: “US Refuses Jet Into Its Airspace: Carrying Journalist Who Criticizes US Foreign Policy” – which is nonsense. Airplanes are not rerouted because they contain journalists who criticize U.S. policy (and the U.S. has nothing to fear from Ospina who is, at best, barely a mediocre journalist). It is interesting that even the title of his little Ospina-derived story here includes mention of his writing – as if any of his work has ever been some revelation or expose. Ospina isn’t a threat precisely because he is such a remarkably bad historian and investigator (he is the author of this unimpressive book, reviewed here on this site: http://www.nicaliving.com/node/12083). The Air France story is written as if somehow there is no fault per Air France. The story makes obvious that Mexican authorities work with U.S. counterparts. Air France did not give passenger data to U.S. authorities even though they were going through U.S. airspace. Only Mexican authorities were given the data – which they in turn fed to the U.S. ones, likely based on a flagged name. So, to a U.S. monitor working on short notice, the fact that an Air France flight includes a no-fly passenger on a flight entering U.S. air space without any notification likely prompted an automatic reroute, without any analysis as to why the person was originally on the non-fly list (certainly not because he was a journalist critical of the U.S.). The flight never would have took off with Ospina had Air France given the full data upfront (the airspace scope of the no fly system is clear and outlined in the first few sentence of the Wikipedia entry). Ospina and his publisher claim they will sue for damages. Odd, given that this is the best possible thing that could have happened to him given that he is working on his new book on the CIA – which he, of course, implies was really responsible for the reroute! He hasn’t any damages and instead has received more press than he ever got for his so-called journalistic efforts. For him, this is a dream come true, all due (assuming his story is what really happened, and assuming he did not know he was on the no fly list, if he is in fact on the list) not to a conspiracy or the CIA, but because of Air France incompetence…