Source: Baltimore Sun
Author: Jon Hilkevitch

What was universally understood as a simple, gracious gesture in the past now can easily become the raw material that breeds suspicion and fear a decade after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Trevor Gray was boarding a Frontier Airlines flight in Denver a week before the 10th anniversary of 9/11 when he saw two passengers in line ahead of him hand a tin box to a flight attendant.

The flight attendant seemed surprised, but she removed the lid to discover a batch of homemade chocolate chip cookies, Gray said. She thanked the passengers profusely and started eating the cookies and passing them to other flight attendants, said Gray, 22, a Kildeer, Ill., resident who is a senior at the University of Michigan.

"Free drinks for you guys," Gray said he remembers the flight attendant saying to the two passengers.

Gray's thoughts immediately shifted to security. Were the cookies possibly poisoned?

"I was just so stunned by how excited the stewardess was acting," he said. "You would think the flight crew is trained to evaluate the situation, but she blindly started eating the cookies and handing them out.

"She then goes into the cockpit to serve cookies to the pilots," said Gray, who said he watched intently from his seat in Row 5. "I go, 'Oh, no, this is getting worse by the second.' I am thinking something is wrong. I was pretty afraid."

After the plane took off for Detroit, Gray said he began to worry that the cookies might be harmful and the pilots could become incapacitated, he said.

Then, the same flight attendant who accepted the cookies from apparent strangers walked through the aisle carrying a platter — she was distributing chocolate chip cookies to all the passengers, Gray said.

Gray, who recalled an experience he had in eighth grade in which several students brought brownies laced with laxatives to school for a birthday, stayed in his seat on the plane and did not speak up.

"I didn't want to be the one to stir up commotion and start mass chaos on the plane," he said.

The flight to Detroit was otherwise routine, except toward the very end when the captain got on the public address system to thank the two passengers who provided the "delicious cookies," Gray said.

Gray later discussed the incident with his parents. His mother, Sandy, urged him to report it to authorities, but he said he was too busy at school to get to it immediately. So Sandy Gray contacted the Transportation Security Administration and got nowhere, she said. She then emailed the Tribune.

A Frontier spokesman told your Getting Around reporter that the airline tracked down the flight attendants and pilots and interviewed them. The tin of cookies was a gift to the flight crew from two passengers who were friends of a Frontier employee, said Frontier spokesman Peter Kowalchuk. One of the two passengers was a girl, possibly around 12 years old, he said.

Kowalchuk confirmed that the cookies were offered to the pilots, but they did not eat any, at least not during the flight.

"The pilots briefly discussed the potential problems that could arise, and they did not eat the cookies while on the aircraft," Kowalchuk said.

Several nonpaying passengers in the front of the plane, either Frontier employees or family members, asked the flight attendants about the cookies, and they were offered some too, Kowalchuk said. However, none of the paying customers was offered the cookies, he said.

What about the other passengers whom Gray observed eating cookies? Kowalchuk provided a logical explanation. Frontier serves complimentary chocolate chip cookies on flights that depart after 10 a.m., he said. This particular flight left Denver about 2 p.m. The free cookies are a carry-over from a custom started by Midwest Airlines, which merged with Frontier in 2010.

Gray said he was satisfied with Frontier's explanation, and he felt reassured that the airline demonstrated it is serious about security.

But the fear that the terrorists' actions planted on Sept. 11, 2001, makes it bear repeating the advice of anti-terrorism experts yet again: If you see something, say something.

"Kudos to the passenger (Gray) for his heightened state of security,'' said Corey Caldwell, a spokeswoman for the Association of Flight Attendants, which represents Frontier flight attendants.

Still, Sandy Gray said it's troubling that she got what she considers the runaround when she attempted to report the incident to the TSA by calling a phone number listed on its Web site.

The TSA representative who answered "listened to the story and said, 'Oh God, that's terrible. But we're not the people. You need to call the FAA,'" Sandy Gray said.

She then called the Federal Aviation Administration, which sent her back to the TSA. After the Sept. 11 attacks, Congress created the TSA and shifted responsibility for commercial aviation security from the FAA to the new agency.

"My thinking was this is something that could be serious and easily slip through if no one reports it,'' Sandy Gray said. "What if this was a trial run to test whether a cookie terror attack could bring down a plane? It's the stupidest thing, but who knows? You have to be concerned, especially when you have a plane up in the air.''