News Safe Skies
posted by on January 18 at 9:21 AM
Here’s hoping that the terrorists aren’t as sophisticated as the nine year-old boy that ran away from home—and managed to get on two Southwest Airlines flights without a ticket.
Early the next morning, though, Semaj took off again. He slipped out of his suburban Tacoma home and somehow made it to Sea-Tac Airport, where he sailed through a Transportation Security Administration checkpoint.Authorities say the boy managed to lie his way onto two flights, aiming to get to his native Texas….
Airline spokeswoman Marilee McInnis said Semaj approached the Southwest ticket counter Monday morning. He said he had lost his boarding pass and his mother was already in the boarding area.
Southwest’s policy for unaccompanied minors only applies to 5- to 11-year-olds, and Semaj—apparently having done his homework—told the agent at the ticket counter that he was 12
To recap: You can’t bring a bottle of water into the airport. But a nine year-old boy, without any identification, who claims to be 12 will be handed a boarding pass and waved through security. How long before the terrorists add shorties and sob stories to their arsenal…
Enough with your neocon fear-mongering, Dan. I think it's a nice little reminder of the way things used to be, when some little snot-nosed miscreant with a little ingenuity could hopscotch halfway across the country. Although whenever I ran away from home, I only got as far as the entrance of the neighborhood, then turned around and came back home.
In Gaza nine year old boys would be only too happy to strap on a belt of explosives, cross the border, and detonate themselves in a bus. They've seen the training videos at school and on TV.
This is just more evidence of how brain-dead our security setup is. Airport security as currently constituted is completely worthless for fighting terrorism, and fights only ordinary citizens instead.
Sounds like we need a "war on children." Rebranding time.
You'd think someone could have been proactive and checked his story by paging his mother.
I was joshing, him. I don't expect the terrorists to adopt this nine year old's technique. But I'm going to try it the next time I wanna fly somewhere on the cheap.
In Iraq we have small 12 yo boys attacking our troops.
Just sayin.
Our airline "security" is an elaborate joke. I flew home at Christmas and since I had a one-way ticket, I had to jump through a bunch of stupid hoops, including surrendering my pocket-sized hand sanitizer goo (I'm not a germ freak anywhere except airports, which are disgusting places) because it wasn't in a fucking ziplock bag.
One would think that, with all the corporate welfare we are producing in the name of "The War on Terror!", the Ziplock people would have figured a way to get the TSA to buy a billion Ziplock bags.
Airports don't screen checked baggage or freight. They don't have anything but minimal perimeter security. They don't screen ground personel, and many airlines are hiring scabs to work ground jobs. Any of those things could easily be used by terrorists. But we have to take off our shoes and surrender our hand goo, in the name of some idea of security.
Not to mention, Catalina, that if you wanted to detonate a bomb and create the maximum impact, you wouldn't do it in the plane--you'd do it in the crowded hall where all this faux security is taking place. Imagine what the mouth-breathing TSA people would do then; probably start shooting at random.
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