SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) — Thousands of passengers were herded off airplanes to be re-screened Sunday evening after a security breach at John Wayne Airport, authorities said.

Orange County Sheriff's deputies told passengers that a person made it past a security checkpoint without being screened.

USA today Updated 7/23/2006 9:54 PM ET

Article dosn't say much but for those of flying outa there tomorrow, I would expect it to be a little slow

Gotta love terminal dumps.

STUPID!!!

SNA TSA should be forced to pay each passenger for the time that the TSA wasted due to their incompetence.

Additionally, the screener(s) involved should be fired.

The TSA should have just let this matter go instead of their usual, idiotic non-thinking response. Thousands of passengers herded to a nice, convenient location for a real terrorist bomber to strike.

I don't know. I think I'd have much to say to the passenger who decided to by-pass security and louse up my day along with thousands of other people. I hope they made her get to the very back of the line.


What the heck was she thinking?????

"Passengers erupted in cheers when the checkpoints reopened for screening at 7:20 p.m, said Orange County Sheriff's Lt. Hayward Miller. Many passengers missed their flights and were forced to rebook on later flights."

I'd have had a much different reaction.

Bit of a leap there, Cookie. I didn't see anything that described her decision one way or the other. In fact the TSA would not give details of the incident.

There have been occasions in the past where the offender(sic) had been ignored, misled or umm.. forgotten by the screeners and had had no intention of bypassing screening. I wasn't there and it may not have been any omission on the part of the TSA in this instance.

I certainly would not rule out that possibility though.

The USA today article was vague at best.

SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) — Both terminals at John Wayne Airport were temporarily evacuated Sunday evening and passengers were taken off airplanes after a female passenger made it past a security checkpoint without being screened, authorities said.

You are correct; it has yet to be stated exactly what happened. I took the verbage in the article "made it past a security checkpoint without being screened" to mean that she somehow circumvented the checkpoint, not the TSA missed screening her.

It certainly could have been TSA's fault, but it also could have been this passenger's intentional doing.

Regardless of the passenger intentionally evading the checkpoint or not, the TSA was at fault for stupidly dumping the terminal instead of just letting it go. The odds that she was a terrorist are so low that they might as well be zero.

Possible, but unlikely IMO. I tend to treat anything appearing in the popular media as incomplete at best, inaccurate as the middle ground and simply hyperbole as a worst case.

You're probably right, but since protocol is what it is, it would still technically be the passenger's fault the terminal got dumped. If TSA stopped dumping terminals because some dumb-*ss decides he/she's above going through security, how long do you think it might be for there to be a problem? At that point, we should just tell the TSA to go home, everything's good, those sand-dancers will never think of taking down a few of our planes ever again.

Works for me. I like risks. Let's try it and see how things go.

Trust me, I take things seen/heard in the media with a grain of salt!!

Terminal dumps don't do any good, anyway. If a malicious passenger gets into the sterile area unscreened and unsupervised, and if that passenger had any prohibited items, there are a million and one places the passenger could hide the prohibited item and then re-claim it later when the checkpoint is reopened later in the day. In that kind of situation, it's just a pointless waste of everyone's time.

If one really believes that the passenger deliberately circumvented the screening checkpoint with malicious intent, and if it was not possible to follow the passenger and observe all their actions, then you'd have to do more than just dump the terminal and re-screen all passengers to ensure that the sterile area is really free of prohibited items. On the other extreme, if there are reasons to believe that the passenger went unscreened due merely to random circumstance (not for any reason of the passenger's choosing), then it doesn't make any sense to dump the terminal -- the chances that a random passenger is a terrorist is so close to nil as to be essentially zero for all practical purposes. In practice, things often lie somewhere in the middle, and a more nuanced policy may be appropriate -- but the TSA's current policy of "if in doubt, do a dump" is anything but nuanced, and is completely silly.

So do I. That's why I get up in the morning, leave the house, drive to work on the dangerous freeways, take a chance the bank might get robbed when I go in to make a deposit, go to the store ...

Oh wait, there's risk in EVERYTHING we do. Why is air travel any different?

We probably have a greater chance at being in a hold up at the bank than any of us would ever be in a terrorist attack, yet I don't have to take my shoes off, get frisked, etc, at the bank. Hmmm .... @:-)

We can't stop someone from bypassing security.

No and I wouldn't expect you to.

TSA does not have powers of detention and I don't expect them to risk their lives or health to prevent someone who willfully forces his/her way past the checkpoint.

But what the TSA can do is stop dumping terminals. Especially if the person can be followed. @:-)