An Italian court sentenced a Muslim pilot to ten years for gross negligence. When his passenger jet, en route from Tunisia in 2005, began to malfunction, Shafiq Gharbi left the wheel and prayed.
Rather than following standard procedures to glide the Tuninter 1153 flight to the nearest runway, both Muslim pilots panicked. Having lost the crucial 16 minutes for aimless gliding, they finally decided to crash-land on water.
The curious part is that Gharbi’s prayers might well have been answered; the plane landed on water and 2/3 of its passengers survived.
Gharbi staged the most successful water landing for a commercial jet before the 2008 Hudson landing.
The Palermo court sentenced five other Muslims in absentia. The Tunisian repair technicians installed fuel equipment from a different jet, which led the pilots to believe they have plenty of fuel while in fact they were running out of it.
