chollie

A quirk of US policy.

I frequently fly domestic-domestic-international itineraries, with a change plane at my domestic connection. If I'm on a single international PNR, I am always required to show my passport to the airline before boarding my first domestic-domestic flight - even though it will get checked again before I board my connecting international flight - and even though on one occasion, the international flight was cancelled and I ended up returning home without ever leaving the country.

If I've checked in at home and I'm travelling without a bag, I get paged to the gate counter to provide the passport prior to boarding.

IME, he wouldn't have been able to board the domestic flight without showing his passport.

MSPeconomist

Normal DL procedure for domestic flights connecting to international at check in/bag drop is to verify documents, including visas, and then generate a boarding pass indicating that it is international and documents have been verified. IIRC this prints on the domestic boarding pass as well as the one for an international flight. (Doing OLCI, if allowed for your itinerary which should not if a visa is required, generates a message that you must show passport to a DL agent or feed it into a kiosk an hour before the flight, although I don't think the hour deadline is enforced.) So I think any boarding pass the student would have shown to the TSA document checker would indicate international travel. However, I've never been questioned at MSP when I had a domestic to international connection and it's never been obvious to me that TSA even noticed that I was going overseas. TSA at MSP does have the machines to read boarding passes, at least in the lines for DL elites and PreCheck.

ADDED. On my last domestic to international exMSP flight, I even joked a bit to the PreCheck document checker that I knew why I didn't get the wonderful PreCheck flashing lights because I was continuing to international. TSA wasn't interested in me or my destination.

It sounds to me like the itinerary got SSSS. Does this mean additional questioning or just a more thorough search of carry on items and a pat down? Maybe the student was too friendly during the SSSS and volunteered information that wasn't asked. I wonder whether some of this could have been avoided by linking the return itineraries to the outbound ticket, although it sounds like he had the documents for his return tickets with him.

guflyer

Does going on an international one way trip make one's itinerary coded as a security issue? I have been flying on one way trips to and from Europe and have not been flagged for any additional security. Is this because Africa was the destination?

I could see the airline not allowing the student to fly if he did not meet the visa requirements, but it does not make sense how this would put him on a 24 hour list.

sbagdon

I suspect one-way in general sets off flags.

I don't think it was Africa, I susepct it was the country and flying pattern. I can see some list out there saying Ethiopia, Somalia and Yemen are "on the list", while Kenya, Tanzania and South Africa aren't.

For someone who is supposed to have flown so many times, to so many continents, I suspect he talked his way out of getting through screening. What's absurd, if true, is that he got all of this treatment, even with the level of documentation he had with him (travel plans while there, return trip scheduled, etc).

Ari

My guess is that this was not TSA, this was FBI/JTTF and that the story is a little bungled as to who did the interviewing. A young US Citizen traveling on a oneway ticket paid for by a third party to scary-brown-people-terror-land sets off alarm bells. I'd love to know what the person or people who interviewed the traveler was wearing and any credentials presented or representations made as to agency. The person or people he spoke to were most likely not with the TSA and most likely had authority to make nominations to the TSC. The 'alarm bells' I described above don't ring in the TSA breakroom. This was not the result of a chance encounter with a BDO-- they were there in advance ready for him with information about his travel and then told him they needed time to check out his story.

I believe that this citizen was intentionally blacklisted from travel to a certain destination (or possibly travel at all) by his own government until he provided them with an explanation of his reason for traveling there, and until he gave them time to decide if they were satisfied with that explanation. They only asked for 24 hours in this case.

catocony

Nothing about this story adds up.

ironmanjt

CBP, and they do do this at MSP, along with DEA. It's quite likely the Agent flagged it at check-in, called CBP/DEA, and they're the ones who met Jeffrey.

GUWonder

If considered blacklisted (by the government), TSA may be called over to check-in counters in anticipation of other federal government employees responding with an over-the-phone clear or in-person before the person can be checked in for the flight.

GUWonder

I have seen the FBI show up at MSP when DEA was certainly not in the picture and CBP weren't relevant to the trips even as they are obviously staffing MSP.

ironmanjt

I was merely commenting that they both are on-site at MSP, and I've seen both in action in response to the airlines calling them at check-in...

GUWonder

Sure, but I don't know why anyone thinks it likely that this was the result of a check-in agent's own suspicions. Lots of people fly from MSP to Africa on one-way tickets and this kind of outcome is not generally representative of what takes place at MSP when flying one-way tickets to Ethiopia, Tanzania or Kenya.

MavSeven

I can tell you exactly what happened:

It states clearly in the blog post that Ethiopia requires proof on onward transit for this kid's visa. Since he had a one-way ticket, the itinerary was flagged, and he was told at check in that the airline would not allow him to travel that day, as he had no such proof. He eventually convinced the airline to let him try again "tomorrow", and contacted Ethiopian the next day, when they told him that he had to bring proof of onward transit, and pay a change fee per their rules.

So, instead of owning up to his mistake, the self-entitled brat concocted a story about how TSA stopped him from flying and that the airline should compensate him.

WilcoRoger

in the OP

Through Orbitz, he’d booked a one-way ticket from Minneapolis to Tanzania via United Airlines and Ethiopian Airlines.

So how exactly a ticket to Tanzania is not a proof of onward transit in Ethiopia?

GUWonder

Unless someone is working for a relevant government agency or a contractor and violating some applicable rules and practices when it comes to such matters, rather surprising that anyone here would know exactly what happened.

TSORon

(emphasis mine)

There is no such thing. The "No Fly list" is not something you pop onto or off of, once on it you have to make an application to be taken off. There is no such thing as a "24 hour No Fly list".

One can be denied access to the sterile area for many reasons, where you are going is not one of them. As usual, there is more to this story than we are being told, specifically the part that got him denied by either the airline, the TSA, or local LEO's. Find out what that part of the story is and then you will have enough information to form an opinion.

Or, you can just blame the TSA, after all that is the norm here isn't it.