Arrived at 4:00 to try and standby for an earlier flight. Lines out the door and down the sidewalk. Calling people by flight for the security checkpoint.

Since I was standing by for an earlier flight I got to the gate juuust in time to see it pull away. I'm now airside listening to people complain while waiting for my original flight.

That sucks. But at least the children are safe.

That's 2 today with OAK dumping.

Must be the earthquakes getting to folks.

Stupid Morons!!!

New news - this appears related to the OAK lockdown. Overheard conversation indicates that the mystery pax was headed to BUR or LAX and was the cause of the BUR dump.

Edit to say I can't quite think of how that would work unless the suspect aircraft from OAK had (possibly) already deplaned at BUR and pax could be airside?

So was LAX dumped too? Also if this person was a mystery how would they know where they were flying to? If they did know who the person was they could have easily stopped them once on board.

Does any of this terminal dumping make sense? Unless they throughly search every single inch of the sterile area after a terminal dump then it's possible the person who breached security could have left something there for when the terminal reopens.

Beats me, just gate agent scuttlebut. Who knows?

That's easier to answer. No, it makes no sense.

Bad design. Bad implementation.

Bad agency.

Double-positive, like "really unique."

Well, true, but really, most security is designed to disrupt, delay, and make more difficult.

That is why a small to mid-size dog is 99% the deterrent of a truly dangerous one.

Or why an alarm system in the country (20 minute response from the sheriff) works.

They just make the bad guys go elsewhere.

So, a bunch of oh-what-religion-should-they-be Terrorists decide that the mall shootup was fun and that an airport would be even more fun. Something happens half way through gettting in to get to the guns that came in with the unscreened oh-what-country-should-they-be-from illegal alien cleaning the restrooms.

So now instead of hitting the airport at rush hour when they know nobody knows they're coming, they gotta decide if they've been rumbled and there are fifty armed response cops drinking lattachinos in the Starbucks.

Or now, who knows.

But dumping the terminal seems to me to be very reasonable. Heck, the Brits, who have had a few experiences with bombs in public places, do it in Gatwick and Heathrow and the Tube on a fairly regular basis.

And the flip side, of course, is that a terrorist wants to disrupt and put fear into the hearts of folks.

A terminal (or pick your other venue) dump becomes so predictable that it's almost fodder for someone that wants to disrupt and inconvenience others. And that means they achieve their goals - without violence or the trouble of hijacking a plane.

I wonder if some researcher would add up all the costs of the unreasonable parts of the ongoing response to 9/11, we'd find that the costs outweigh the damage done in those attacks. Even though the Feds fund a lot of research (even some questionable stuff), I'd bet this one would never see the light of day.

Agree completely.

This nation's stupid and un-American response to 9/11 caused Osama Bin Laden's act of terrorism to go from 'some damage' to 'far exceeded wildest expectations'.

What a nation of cowardly idiots we are.

Ah, very interesting, four airplanes, three thousand people, two large landmark buildings - "some damage."
Speak for yourself, bubba.

I dunno, I been around people after *actual* violence (you know, blood, ambulances, etc) and I been around people after a terminal dump. Mostly you can tell which is which.

You'd have to define reasonable. If the Spanish police had dumped the public transport system, if the Brits had dumped the tube, etc - sure would have saved a lot of dough.

So, the US TSA is full of cowardly idiots under the mind thrall of Kip Hawley when he's not eting babies or whatever - let's assume Spiff is right.

But the *best* response the Brits could come up with in twenty years of tube bombings was to freeze the trains and dump the stops. (I been caught twice almost in sight of Oxford Circus. In the summer. During rush hour. Not nice.) It's not like they didn't have time and political will to try other solutions. They removed mailboxes and trashcans and parking zones and put up CCTV and infiltrated and whooped some serious *ss up in Belfast, and etc, etc.

And still, when there was a threat over a threshold, they froze the trains and tubes and dumped the platforms.

So, like CPR and beer (not together) I think you gotta go with what works unless you can figure better.

There's a security breach or a credible threat to Airport_Z - what do you do? Complaining about Kip or whatever doesn't do anything - what do you do? If you're wrong and an airplane falls out of the sky, or some disaffected "urban youth" shoots up the place - what do you say that you should have done?

You stop everything, dump the terminal, and take another look at everyone coming back in. Because there is nothing else that quite works so well.

news link please.

Opps I forgot we bash without any facts here.