Approximately 1000 passengers were forced to deplane at Omaha's Epply airfield yesterday after a 'security breach'. Said 'breach' was a woman who set of the metal detectors but did not stop. You would think that TSA would have pursued and caught the one passenger causing the problem, rather delaying all departing flights! Here is the link to the story - http://www.ketv.com/news/13377198/detail.html

Even little airports can be plagued with large stupidity.

Yet another example of TSA taking no accountability for their mistake in not stopping the woman who alarmed the WTMD. You got to love the sentence in the article - "TSA officials had no further comment about the security breach."

ZERO ACCOUNTABILITY AND MAXIMUM INCONVENIENCE TO THE TRAVELLING PUBLIC!

A screener is standing in front of the WTMD before anyone goes through - so what did this woman do, knock him/her to the ground and keep going? Did someone say 'excuse me, please come back here as you set off the alarm'? Or did the screener just stare into space while she walked past him/her?

If the screener was there and missed the alarm or let this woman walk away, and terminal was dumped because of it, then they should be terminated. Simple as that.

If I was the CEO of the airline whose schedule was disrupted because of delays caused by this mess, then I would be calling for someone's head - the screener and the supervisor at the very least.

I fly through Epply a couple times a year. I'm surprised there were 1000 people airside since the airport is divided. Each airline in that concourse must have had a plane going at that second.

I just wonder how someone goes through the security check point without having to take something off the xray belt. I usually have to wait a minute for the x-ray people to stop talking long enough to look at my stuff and advance it through. Maybe the person just walked through the detector with all the stuff?

Glad i wasn't there. I probably would have ended up on the do-not-fly list for my actions.

Our resident screeners will correct me if I'm wrong, but TSA staff do not have the legal authority to physically detain anyone. Of course, if you have bags then they simply retain them and by extension, you.

Seems this woman had no carryons, so the TSA had no leverage. Since she did alarm and then didn't stop what ought to happen is:
a) a screener equipped with a radio follows her pending arrival of a LEO
b) the checkpoint area (only) goes into lockdown.

Neither of these is possible under current TSA SOP; ergo terminal dump

Bingo. These are the questions never asked, let alone answered. I keep wondering why even the press doesn't ask those questions.

They don't want to end up on the No Fly or No Work lists?

I wouldn't want the screeners to try to physically detain anyone. That's not their job and they aren't paid to take those kinds of risks.

Still, how hard would it be to follow her? Was she that elusive?

These asinine terminal dumps sound like collective punishment more than anything else.

What is the point of making people deplane, who had absolutely nothing to do with the incident?

I'm not condoning this sort of thing y'unnerstan', but as far as I can tell the thinking is: she might have had a (gasp) weapon, and since the TSA lost sight of her, she might have passed said (gasp) weapon to anyone anywhere in the secure (hah !) area including those on planes at the gate.

The article doesn't say, but you can bet 1) the woman was not found and 2) no (gasp) weapon was found. Yawn.

I live here in OMA and watched the story last night on the news. A clear case of having a bad "standard response" in place for an event that should have been dealt with in a simple, quick manner.

Reporters and the talking heads on the news repeatedly commented that no one was expressing alarm or behaving as if a "serious" breach of security had occurred. General references were made to airport police and other "security" staff saying that the terminal dump was just an SOP response to the situation. I almost choked on my dinner. If it's not a big deal, Why then for the love of god would they need to yank everyone off of the NW, DL, AA, MW and AA flights in that end of the terminal. How do you loose sight of someone who breached security in a terminal area that is about the size of a football field? Especially when that someone is likely a 75 yr old grandma wearing Husker memorabilia (perhaps her 72 national championship commemorative Bob Devaney button set off the detector!).

Or maybe we just want to demonstrate our street kred to all the TSA folks at LAX.