Two United Airlines pilots were assigned first-class seats on a deadhead flight — positioning to their next assignment, free to relax. They chose the cockpit instead. They wanted to keep an eye on the man flying the plane.
That man is Ibrahim R. Mossallam.
Mossallam is a United Airlines pilot and Vice President of the Board of CAIR-New York — the Council on American-Islamic Relations, an organization the Justice Department named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing case. He used social media to describe the October 7 massacre — the deadliest attack on Jewish civilians since the Holocaust — as "resistance by a brave people." He insisted the slaughter was "not unprovoked."
United Airlines temporarily pulled Mossallam from flying duties after the posts surfaced. That's the part of this story that makes sense. Here's the part that doesn't: he's back. Mossallam returned to the cockpit, still posting strongly anti-Israel statements, still holding his CAIR-New York board position, still flying commercial passengers for a major American airline.
According to reporting on the case, United Airlines wanted to terminate Mossallam. The pilot union he belonged to blocked the move. So a pilot who publicly celebrated the massacre of 1,200 civilians — including Americans — got his seat back because a labor contract said so. Two fellow pilots were uncomfortable enough with that arrangement to voluntarily sit in the cockpit and watch him work.
The union's logic here deserves examination. Labor protections exist so workers can't be fired over personal beliefs unrelated to job performance. That's a reasonable principle in most contexts. But "personal beliefs" is doing a lot of heavy lifting when the belief in question is that a terrorist massacre constitutes brave resistance — and the believer holds 200 lives in his hands at 35,000 feet every time he goes to work. The FAA certifies pilots based on fitness to fly. The question of whether a man who celebrates mass murder meets that standard isn't a union grievance. It's a security question.
Mossallam's CAIR-New York affiliation adds a layer the union argument can't reach. CAIR presents itself as a civil rights organization. The FBI severed its working relationship with CAIR in 2008 over concerns about the group's ties to Hamas. Mossallam isn't just a pilot with controversial social media posts. He's a board officer of an organization the federal government has formally distanced itself from over terrorism connections — and he's publicly endorsing the specific kind of violence those connections involve.
United Airlines has not issued a public statement explaining why Mossallam was reinstated or what safeguards, if any, are in place. The silence is its own statement. Every airline in America runs ad campaigns about passenger safety. United's tagline used to be "Fly the Friendly Skies." Apparently the skies are friendly enough for a pilot who thinks October 7 was an act of heroism.
The FAA has the authority to pull a pilot's certificate. The union has a contract. United has a PR department. None of them have acted.
The pilots who sat in that cockpit did.