Earlier this week, a passenger who forgot he had a gun in his carry on was able to slip through security at Concourse B at MSY and boarded a Southwest flight. Once airborne, the passenger realized what he had done and turned the gun over to a F/A. He was questioned and released by police after arriving in PHX.

Although my questions are about airport secirity in general, I'm using MSY for my example.

Question about MSY security - the article that I read about this incident mentions that "the company that provides security at the New Orleans airport, International Total Services, is in bankruptcy."

Does anyone know if this company supplies security for all the airlines who use MSY or just for the airlines that use the same concourse as Southwest?

If it's for all the airlines, who makes the decision about what security firm to use, the dominant airline at MSY, or do all the airlines get a certain percentage of the vote based on their market share and majority vote rules? I'm assuming that since security is the responsibility of the airlines, that the airport would have no say-so in the matter and have to go with which ever firm(s) the airline(s) chose.

Let's assume for a moment that this had happened on an America West flight instead of Southwest. Let's also assume that America West wanted to use a superior security firm, but had to go with what Continental and Southwest (the 2 other carriers on Concourse B) wanted to use.

If the security firm that Southwest and Continental chose allowed an America West passenger to slip through the checkpoint, obviously the security firm would be at fault, but what about the airline?

Would America West alone be responsible, or would Southwest and Continental have to share part of the blame, keeping in mind that all three share the concourse and share the cost of providing the security in that concourse.

In the theoretical case above, could America West use a different firm even though they share the same concourse with Southwest and Continental? If so, how would this be accomplished? Separate, additional screening checkpoints at the America West gate for their passengers only?

When an airline has a whole concourse to itself can they use a different security firm from the other concourses?

For instance, Delta has all the gates at Concourse D and Concourse D is "closed" (meaning that a passenger could not enter security through D and then gain access to A, B,or C.) If all the other airlines in the other concourses wanted to use the Fly-by-Night-Bankrupt Security firm and Delta wanted to use Brinks or another company with a better reputation, could they do so? I'm assuming the answer would be yes.

Is it more cost effective for all the airlines at a certain airport to use the same firm?

Also, are there any US Airlines which actually handle their own security, or do they all contracts with outside companies? I read a recent article in the Denver Post that mentioned that Frontier was "studying" the possibility of having their own employees man the checkpoints at Concourse A at DEN.

Thanks for any insight anyone might be able to provide, and if I have posted this topic in the wrong forum, would someone please let me know.

Thanks

Mike