More stupidity:

Lindbergh terminal closed after suspicious passenger goes missing


3:55 p.m. May 31, 2008

SAN DIEGO – Lindbergh Field's Terminal 2 was shut down for more than two hours Saturday after a would-be passenger left a screening area when authorities wanted to conduct a hand inspection of a bag, a spokeswoman for the Transportation Security Administration said.
The incident began about 10:30 a.m., and the terminal was reopened about 12:40 p.m., said TSA spokeswoman Carrie Harman.

Passengers who had already been screened had to leave the secured area, and passengers on one flight were deplaned and rescreened when a sweep of the terminal by TSA officers, canines and San Diego police was completed.
Harman said she did not know how many flights or passengers were affected.

The suspect bag had been through the initial X-ray screening, but TSA officers wanted to do a hand search of the bag.

Morons.

Delayed flights, missed connections, planes left waiting on the tarmac burning fuel. Is anyone at TSA ever held accountable for the problems they cause?

so how is the fact the the guy that left the screening area before they could search his bag, and leaving the bag there the TSA's fault? He could have had a bomb or anything in that bag. The TSA was doing their job which is securing and protecting the airport and passengers. This should be blamed on the guy that ran off without his bag and not the TSA.

I disagree completely.

There was absolutely no need to dump the terminal. If the x-ray image was so damn dangerous-looking, then someone should have followed the person. Oh, and I am sure they cannot identify the person, either, further underscoring how little they cared until long after the fact.

The imbeciles in the TSA who let the person leave and the other imbeciles who dumped the terminal should be fired, have all of their benefits revoked and sent to jail for gross incompetence.

STUPID!!!!

The TSA should be destroyed!

Totally agree. It is painfully obvious that many folks here should never apply for any type of security or intelligence positions. At least I hope they don't.

Did he leave the bag behind?
If he left the bag behind then the TSA should have been able to immediately ascertain what it contained. If it was harmelss, no reason then to close anything down.

And I hope many currently in such positions are severely punished for their incompetence and that they never work in the industry again. They are imbeciles.

The TSA's umm.. explanation does not say, so you can draw your own conclusion from that omission.

If a bag check is required, remove the bag from the conveyor and prevent the passenger from reclaiming it before the inspection is complete. Not rocket science, but then...

Having it happen once is careless, twice in successive days is sheer incompetence but of course, it was all the passengers' fault, right ?Unfortunately it appears quite a number already have. And been accepted.

You're absolutely right. There is probably no one around with security experience.

In fact, you might find people who are just VPs of a software company or someone who used to be a VP for Union Pacific Railroad.

Oh wait, I'm sorry, those are the security credentials of the person currently in charge of the TSA, Kip Hawley.

Sorry, matb2005, but nowhere in that news article does it say anything about the bag being left behind.

In all likelihood, the guy - uh, er, sorry - the guy or gal (since determining the passenger's sex was apparently beyond the expertise of the TSA personnel involved) probably got fed up with having his/her belongings pawed through and took his/her stuff and left. By the time the "alarm" sounded, he/she had probably made it to an alternate checkpoint and made it through security with no problems whatsoever.

Yes, I agree that it's idiotic (and quite possibly a real security risk) that a passenger might be stopped at Checkpoint A and then clear Checkpoint B with no problems, but that it a direct result of both the TSA's deliberate "unpredictability" and the general lack of oversight and removal of incompetent TSOs.

By the way, if a bag had been left behind, it would have been a simple matter to determine if the suspicious contents were (a) a bomb or (b) a bottle of mouthwash (or soft drink, or water, etc., etc.). If (a), then the response was absolutely inadequate. If (b), the response was absolutely absurd.

Matb, as a newly trained TSO you should recognize the fact that it is the TSAs fault here. A suspect bag should not have been available for anyone to grab and take off with. Most likely the xray operator advanced the bag out of the machine too far, and the (unknowning) passenger thought it was cleared, and they grabbed their bag and left. By reading the article, it doesn't sound like the bag was left behind. The lesson to be learned here is to keep the suspect bags in the tunnel...terminal dump avoided.

And may we also help you find more gainful employment elsewhere?

I am open to suggestions....
(Please don't list off every fast food chain or Walmart....I actually have a mortgage to pay).

What are your interests?

Sorry, my mistake. I assumed that the suspicious pax had simply gone back out the way he/she came in. For whatever reason - false optimism, perhaps? - I just didn't grasp the fact that he/she had just gone directly through to the gate area. Of course, the only rational response in that case is that the TSOs were complete idiots, but that's already been said, hasn't it?