Washington  - Airline officials ordered nine traditionally-dressed Muslims, including three children, off an AirTran flight that was to have left Reagan National Airport in Washington Thursday afternoon, the Washington Post reported.

Two passengers apparently complained to flight staff after overhearing a suspicious remark among the Muslim travellers, the newspaper reported Friday.

All but one of the group were US-born citizens, and they were headed to Orlando, Florida, for a religious retreat. The group included an anaesthesiologist and a lawyer. The children were aged seven, four and two.

Airport officials later cleared the group to travel and FBI agents saw the incident as a misunderstanding, an airport official told the Post. An AirTran spokesman agreed, but added that its pilot had acted properly.

Kashif Irfan, one of the Muslim passengers, told the Post that the problem unfolded after his brother, Atif, and the brother's wife discussed the safest place to sit on an airplane. The brother apparently looked out the window and saw the jet engines next to his window.

Fellow passengers apparently felt threatened and complained to the pilot, and two federal air marshals on board then reported the matter to airport police.

AirTran spokesman Tad Hutcheson agreed that the incident amounted to a misunderstanding but said the incident had been handled properly.

"At the end of the day, people got on and made comments they shouldn't have made on the airplane, and other people heard them," Hutcheson was quoted as saying. "It just so happened these people were of Muslim faith and appearance. It escalated, it got out of hand and everyone took precautions." (dpa)