Tsa Screw-up?

[starvingcfi]

hey, anyone got any info on tpa being evacuated b/c of a tsa screw-up? i just caught the end of story on the news. from what i understood, tsa has a test bag they use. (maybe to try to catch themselves?) they left it laying out and something happened. like i said, didn't really catch it.

i was picturing it like this.

tsa 1- "hey, just put the test bag over there. let's go get a doughnut."

tsa 2- "great. i've been daydreaming of doughnuts all morning."

---- 1 hr later

tsa 1- "hey, what's that bag laying there?"

tsa 2- "i'm not sure. looks kind of familiar...but it could be a bomb. maybe we should evacuate."

tsa 1- "eh. could be. hey! want some coffee?"

tsa 2- "do i?! let's go!"

---- 1 hr later

tsa 1- "hey, that suspicious bag is still there. should we call someone?"

tsa 2- "we'd better call the police. shut down the terminal. full cavity searches for everyone."



hehe. just my little rendition. let's see if anyone knows what really happened.

 

[ShawnC]

It was on Fox 13.

It was a TSA test bag, by South West.

They put the bag though the machine, set off the alarm, 30 minutes later a whole airside was evacuated. Finally they accounted for all their test bags and let them in.

A BA and a SW plane was delayed about an hour.

It took them an hour to find it was a test bag, and the terminal was evacuated for about a half hour.

Moron TSA screeners. Well they are too stupid to last long if it were a private agency, lets federalize them so they are protected by the federal union.

 

[starvingcfi]

what a bunch of monkeys. someone needs to pour some chlorine in the gene pool. thanks shawn.

 

[EagleRJ]

A similar thing happened at DFW several days ago. A passenger was selected for ETD screening, and after he was cleared and walked away, the machine said it detected explosives. After mulling over it for 32 minutes, the TSA employee notified their superior, and Terminals A, B, and C were cleared (75% of the airport). Something like 400 flights were delayed, and many were cancelled.
Last I heard, a TSA spokesman said they were "reviewing procedures". Hopefully with that employee's replacement!

 

[Typhoon1244]

A similar thing happened at DFW several days ago. A passenger was selected for ETD screening, and after he was cleared and walked away, the machine said it detected explosives. After mulling over it for 32 minutes, the TSA employee notified their superior, and Terminals A, B, and C were cleared (75% of the airport). Something like 400 flights were delayed, and many were cancelled.

At one point, a reporter asked DFW's TSA spokesman--I forget his name--whether the screeners attempted to apprehend the passenger in question. His reply was, "These people [screeners] aren't law enforcement officers. They're not trained to go tackle someone."

In that case, I wonder, why the bloody f_ck are they there??? Do you meant to tell me that if someone tries to force their way into the terminal, there's not a thing these clowns can do about it?

Good lord, the folks in BDU's with unloaded M16's were more potent than that!

 

[Typhoon1244]

From Bill Maher's When You Ride ALONE, You Ride With bin Laden:
...Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta has insisted that we must heed the lessons of the 40s Japanese internment in not resorting to racial or ethnic profiling in our airports. When asked on 60 Minutes whether a 70-year-old woman from Vero Beach would receive the same level of scrutiny as a Muslim young man from Jersey City, he replied, "I would hope so," proving that the first casualty of war is common sense. "Passengers should find all the evidence of equal inspection reassuring," Mineta said.

Reassuring? It's reassuring to know that the people guarding our jugular have decided on a policy of suspending human judgement? Actually, having robots and nitwits check everyone equally is a sure recipe for disaster. It's a mindless, exploitable system of window dressing and posturing; it's procedure-bound automatons following proscribed guidelines by rote. It's randomness when we need focus. It's heads up asses instead of heads up.

Somewhere along the line we became this oversensetive victim culture where it is assumed that no one is ever supposed to get physically or emotionally hurt. We can't approach or question anyone about anything for fear of hurting their feelings, making them self-conscious, and ultimately becoming the defendant in their discrimination lawsuit. Remember, we're not talking about beating young Middle Eastern men with rubber hoses or placing Arab American families into internment camps. We're asking them to perhaps endure a few extra questions at the baggage check-in line so that we can all get back to the days when the most life-threatening thing on a plane was the Chicken Kiev.

We've been brainwashed into believing that it's a sin to discriminate. But discrimination doesn't mean racism; it means telling unlike things apart. Iowa grandpas and nine-year-old girls from Ohio are simply not looking to visit "a painful chastisement upon the Western infidels." "Profiling," like "discrimination," has become a bad word, even though all police work is based on it, as it must be. If we stopped calling it profiling and started calling it "proactive intelligence screening" or "high-alert detecting," people would be saying, "Well, it's about time."

Now I know what somebody's going to say. "This is the guy who called our service-men and -women 'cowards!'" No, he didn't...but even if he did, they fired the host of a show called Politically Incorrect for saying something politically incorrect? And then to top it off, Ari Fleischer told us "Americans need to watch what they say...?"

Where is that written in the Constitution?

(Go get a copy of When You Ride ALONE.... Trust me, you'll like it, even you conservatives.)

 

[EagleRJ]

At one point, a reporter asked DFW's TSA spokesman--I forget his name--whether the screeners attempted to apprehend the passenger in question. His reply was, "These people [screeners] aren't law enforcement officers. They're not trained to go tackle someone."

Well they don't have to be! Every checkpoint has at least one DPS officer (Texas State Patrol) sitting there too. They won't know to stop someone, though, if the TSA doesn't tell them anything.

Anyway, that's a moot point, since the machine apparently alarmed after the passenger had already disappeared into the crowd. I wonder if it just malfunctioned, or if they weren't operating it correctly?

 

[NEDude]

TSA

TSA keeps screwing up and does not have to face any consequences. Delayed flights cost money. Who gets to bear the cost for the delays? Do you think it is TSA? Nope. The already financially struggling airlines have to pay for TSA screwups.

Airlines are already paying out through the nose for all of these new security measures, and now they have to pay for the screwups as well. And then John Mcain says airlines should not receive any federal assistance. So the feds can drain money left and right from the airline industry and the airlines have no right to ask for help? How screwed up.

 

[spitfire1940]

Just a personal story about TSA incompetence ...

I was flying traffic survey in the DC area last spring and summer. We were operating out of an airport outside the 15 NM Washington TFR (Maryland Airport, 2W5) because TSA had closed the airport normally used by the traffic flights (Hyde Field W32), which is only about eight miles from DCA.

Anyway, in anticipation of W32 getting reopened, all the pilots had to get background checks and get fingerprinted to get PIN numbers to fly in and out of W32. I did all that crap in April. The fingerprints were scanned and stored digitally. Pretty wild, I thought at the time.

Then in August (only four months later), when W32 finally reopened, it turned out that TSA had lost my fingerprints and all my other paperwork. So I had to go back to DCA to get re-fingerprinted. The guys that do the fingerprinting (who don't work for TSA) were not at all surprised that my data had been lost. They said it happens all the time. Yeah, we had a good laugh. Ha ha.

At any rate, the manager at Hyde went back and forth with TSA from October to December trying to get my clearance worked out. you would have thought I was trying to immigrate from Pakistan with my entire family. Actually, that may be easier.

Finally, I told him to give up. I quit the traffic flying job, which was actually pretty fun.

I have held Pentagon press credentials--which, as you would expect, give access to the Pentagon--and applied for federal jobs. I'm a born American citizen, I've flown dozens of hours inside the TFR doing traffic survey and NOT ONCE HAVE I FLOWN MY AIRCRAFT INTO A BUILDING OR A PUBLIC EVENT.

I want to hear about TSA ACTUALLY DOING SOMETHING TO PREVENT CRIMES AND TERROR AND NOT JUST ANNOYING LAW ABIDING CITIZENS ... anybody got any info on that?

One last thing--an airline pilot friend--who's sick of taking his shoes off before he sits down at the controls of a fuel-and-passenger-laden jet-- said the only reason he wants to carry a gun is so that the security idiots leave him alone when he goes to work.

Or, maybe they'll still make him take off his shoes and check for explosvies, even though he's got a hand-cannon and the controls to the plane.... TSA is in serious need of a common sense injection.

Good to get that off my chest.

 

[starvingcfi]

you said it

 

[EagleRJ]

The security screw-up in DFW is estimated to have cost just American Airlines $250,000. Since there's no accountabillity, it looks like we'll just have to eat that.

 

[spitfire1940]

With all the stupid stuff the federal government wastes money on, you'd think Uncle Sam would have to pony up for that. Or maybe it's easier to wait until airlines go bankrupt and then bail them out.