AP Report: U.S. Airport Perimeters Increasingly Breached

An investigative report reveals that unauthorized and sometimes violent breaches at secure areas of major U.S. airports occur much more often than officials are willing to admit.

Accusing the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and Homeland Security officials of actively suppressing information about security perimeter breaches at airports, Associated Press (AP) reporters launched a multi-year legal and investigative battle to learn just how secure U.S. aviation facilities are from trespassers. The results of the study exposed a troubling pattern — not only of serious security vulnerabilities being exploited at airports around the country, but also of public officials’ willingness to sweep such incidents under the rug.

The team that compiled the incidents of airport perimeter breaches following a two-year legal fight for access to public records cautioned that the 345-incident tally over the past decade that they were able to confirm remains an undercount, largely because many U.S. airports continue to withhold records of perimeter security violations. In some cases, TSA officials have reportedly refused to classify clear-cut cases of trespassing on airport tarmacs as a perimeter breach, further skewing the actual scale of the potential security issue.

At an average rate of roughly one airport fence violation every ten days, even the potentially underreported numbers confirmed in the report represent a substantial security gap. Perhaps more troubling, the statistics indicate a steady increase in the number of perimeter breaches every year since 2012.

Many of the instances involve reportedly intoxicated or confused drivers, thrill seekers scaling barbed wire fences, and even cases of skateboarders casually taunting security by zipping past security checkpoints. In some cases, cars drove through fences. A joyrider once sneaked past a gate and attempted to steal a helicopter. A homesick Guatemalan native even walked onto a runway and tried to hitchhike a ride home on a passenger jet that was about to take off at San Francisco International Airport (SFO). There has so far, however, never been a recorded case of an airport perimeter breach with any connection to terrorist activity.

Serious incidents include a 17-year old who attempted to stow away on a plane headed to Morocco from John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK), a foiled robbery in which the suspect pointed a loaded gun at a policeman’s head at Philadelphia International Airport (PHL) and incidents with armed trespassers at Seattle–Tacoma International Airport (SEA) and Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport (MSP). In February of 2015, a married couple stole a ladder from an airport maintenance worker and used it to climb over a barbed wire fence surrounding Los Angeles International Airport (LAX).

SFO topped the AP’s list of most breached airports with a whopping 41 incidents of people trespassing onto airport property. McCarran International Airport (LAS) and PHL followed closely with 30 perimeter violations each. Investigators uncovered 26 cases of the fences being breached at LAX.

“It doesn’t surprise me that people sometimes try to jump over fences to see what they can get away with,” TSA Administrator Peter Neffenger told the AP when asked to comment on the report. “The question is: What’s your ability to detect it and … what might you do to mitigate that happening in the future?”

Aviation security consultant Jeff Price told the reporters, however, that the TSA and airport officials are doing little to mitigate the problem. “The straight-up honest answer as to why it’s not being vigorously addressed? Nothing bad’s happened. Yet.”

[Photo: Associated Press]