That's what happened to Robert Gray, a native of Northern Ireland who flew planes for Massachusetts' Cape Air. But now, thanks to the work of the ACLU, he's back in the cockpit:
Gray, a lawful permanent resident of the United States originally from Northern Ireland, had been labeled by the government as a threat to aviation or national security in January 2005 and rejected for training to fly planes larger than the commuter planes he had been flying for many years ... In July 2005, the ACLU contested the TSA’s actions against Gray in two federal lawsuits charging that Gray had been denied due process of law and fair treatment by the government ...In agreeing to remove Gray from the TSA blacklist, the U.S. goverment has in effect admitted that it has no legitimate grounds with which to declare him a threat.
At one point before talks began, the government seemed to retaliate against Gray for having challenged the training denial through lawsuits by temporarily putting his name on the “No Fly” list which prevented him for a number of months from continuing to fly even the smaller planes he had been authorized to pilot and from flying as a passenger.
