WillCAD

Um... TSA turned him away at the c/p.

Then TSA "workers" watched him attempt to access restricted areas with an unscreened bag at two separate points and failed to alert PAPD.

Then the TSA "workers" lost track of him.

Then the TSA "workers" decided, 45 minutes later, to alert PAPD about a suspected security breech.

Then, knowing that they had a potential security breech - i.e. an unscreened person inside the sterile area - TSA "workers" and "management" decided to forego their well established standard procedure of dumping the terminal, searching the sterile area, and re-screening everyone...

They also decided to forego their well established standard procedure of boarding the flight they knew the unscreened security risk person was heading for to attempt to locate him...

They also decided to simply allow that flight to take off undelayed.

As to boarding a flight without a BP... The guy is a Delta employee and the story says he had a "reservation", so the flight crew may have known him on sight and recognized his name on the manifest. Besides - do airline employees who fly standby have to have BPs? The Delta crew may very well have violated company policy by allowing him aboard without a BP, but seeing as how he was a Delta employee whom they probably knew on sight, and who had a legitimate reservation on the flight, and who held a SIDA badge and was legally authorized to be in the sterile area anyway, I'm not going to castigate them for that. A minor talking-to might be warranted. Maybe.

Face it - TSA "workers" are the morons in this case. The fact that someone else may have violated their company policy inside the sterile area, or that someone else may have allowed this guy on a plane when they shouldn't have, doesn't mitigate the fact that TSA completely screwed up in allowing the guy into the sterile area without being screened in the first place, and had over an hour's warning but still let the plane take off knowing there might be an unscreened person aboard.