Originally Posted by
greentips
The security lapse is predicated on the concept that a pax could buy a ticket, check his luggage through and then simply not board the airplane. Then activate the radio controlled bomb in the luggage.
But the bad guy would have to know (with a high degree of certainty) that he was going to get the wrong boarding pass. For example, our new friend Dave would have to
know he was going to get a boarding pass in some other name to GVA, get his bomb-laden luggage on that flight, then point out the mistake and safely go to EDI instead. It's a really long shot that you'll get a wrong BP.
Originally Posted by
greentips
In late 2001, I boarded an international flight from the US to Asia via Frankfurt and had a large crated checked industrial device on as overweight checked baggage on Lufthansa. ... The regulations then, required the flight to offload baggage for a passenger who is not physically on the airplane.
AFAIK, they still offload baggage if the pax doesn't board. Unless the luggage has been delayed for some reason and is on a later flight to be reunited with the pax; the reasoning being that a bad guy couldn't count on that happening to exploit the security hole.
Davelaw00, I wonder what happened to the person whose BP you got; presumably they went to check in only to find they were already "checked in", unless the GVA flight was a lot later than the EDI flight and it was already sorted out by the time they checked in?