Colgan Air Grounded Him After Finding Name On Watch List

It's a big victory for Erich Scherfen, though a larger battle still looms. On Wednesday, the New Jersey-born pilot was cleared to return to flight duty with Colgan Air, five months after he was suspended by the company.

The Associated Press reports Colgan's two-sentence letter to the Transportation Security Adminstration didn't mention why he was suspended... but it's probably not very difficult to figure out.

As ANN reported, Scherfen sued the Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies last month, asking for his name to be stricken from the so-called "watch list." A combat veteran of the first Gulf War, Scherfen converted to Islam in 1994.

Neither Scherfen nor his Pakistani-born wife have a criminal record, or any ties to terror organizations... but both have been on the list since 2006. Scherfen first discovered their names were on the list when he was suspended from his year-long job as a pilot for Colgan Air last April. The airline told him he was a "positive match" on the TSA's list.

A TSA spokesperson claimed in August that "religious and political affiliation does not impact whether an individual is placed" on a watch list, adding the agency receives those lists from the FBI's Terrorist Screening Center; citing security issues, the FBI will neither confirm nor deny such lists exist at all.

Scherfen doesn't believe TSA's impassioned claims of innocence... and says in his lawsuit that he and his wife were put on the list solely because of their Muslim faith, a violation of their constitutional rights. Furthermore, Scherfen said, being on the list effectively blacklisted him from obtaining another job as a commercial airline pilot.

"The immediate harm to Erich is over," said Witold J. Walczak, legal director of the Pennsylvania chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. "He's back at work."

While Scherfen now works to regain currency before being allowed back in the cockpit, his lawyers are pressing ahead with his lawsuit against the DHS.

FMI: www.aclu.org, www.dhs.gov, www.colganair.com