The FAA's independent oversight team proposed new requirements for handling incomplete security advisories and documenting the reason for passenger restraints. Crestline was ordered to preserve and review incident records that might otherwise have been routinely discarded. The airline began notifying travelers whose complaints had been reopened, including the physician and the family accused of being disruptive. Some accepted refunds and apologies. Others demanded a fuller accounting, arguing that a repayment could not replace the public embarrassment of being removed from an aircraft.
Miles watched these developments with mixed feelings. He wanted the process to move faster, yet he understood why meaningful review took time. A weak investigation could produce a dramatic announcement and little permanent change. A careful one could identify the behavior, the management decisions that allowed it, and the practices that needed correction. His own suffering did not give him the right to shortcut that work.
His mother called after watching Molly's hearing. "That girl has good eyes," Lillian said. "She looked scared the whole time, but she told them what happened anyway."
"She did."
"You thanked her, I hope."
"More than once."
"Good. Your grandpa used to say nobody's courage came out looking polished. Sometimes it was a shaking voice and somebody doing what needed doing anyway." Lillian paused. "You still haven't come to eat your cake, Miles."
"I know, Mama. Every time I plan it, another hearing comes up."
"The cake is not the important part," she answered. "I'm beginning to think you need to hear me say that more than once."
He sat at his kitchen table after the call, looking at the pouch with Isaiah's badge. It had become an object that reporters wanted to photograph and strangers wanted to talk about, but to Miles it remained a piece of his grandfather's work clothes. He could still picture Isaiah's old hands polishing it with a soft cloth, not to impress passengers but because the uniform represented a promise to show up prepared. Miles resolved that when he finally flew to Phoenix again, he would carry it for the same reason he had carried it that first morning.
Not to prove he deserved a seat, but to remember what service was supposed to mean. Leland Crane's criminal trial began more than a year after the unscheduled landing. His attorneys challenged the interpretation of his earlier journeys and argued that the device found aboard Flight 2286 had not been armed, a fact they said undermined the government's description of his intentions. Prosecutors acknowledged the condition of the device when it was seized. They then introduced records, communications, and expert testimony showing that Crane had deliberately planned an attack against an occupied aircraft and had used prior flights to study his opportunity to carry it out.