Molecular beams and laser spectroscopy have been used to prove the operation of an abstraction channel in the interaction of oxygen molecules with the Al(111) surface. In this process, one O atom is adsorbed on the surface whereas the other remains in the gas phase. Experiments find that abstractive chemisorption is operative at all translational energies and markedly increases with energy while rotational excitation of the molecules suppresses the abstraction process. The gas-phase oxygen atoms have a translational energy about 1/7 of the excess energy from the reaction.