Tuesday - June 26, 2012

Have A Nice Flight

Unplugged metal detector triggers JFK chaos

NY Post:
These fools are keeping us safe?!?

The TSA’s bungling reached a new low yesterday when a JFK Airport terminal had to be evacuated and hundreds of passengers marched back through security screening all because one dimwitted agent failed to realize his metal detector had been unplugged, sources told The Post.

The stunning error led to hours of delays, two planes called back from the runway and infinite frustration for furious passengers.

“The truth is, this is the failure of the most basic level of diligence,” a law-enforcement source said. “How can you expect the public to feel confident of the mission of the TSA if they don’t even know if the lights are turned on?”

The chaos at Terminal 7 was caused by screener Alija Abdul Majed, who had manned Lane No. 1 during the morning shift with no idea his metal detector had no juice, sources said.

Amazingly, he failed to realize that alert lights never flashed once as streams of passengers filed through the dead detector, the sources said.

Majed was so clueless that he couldn’t even tell police how long the machine had been shut off or how it happened, the sources said.

“It was simply an unplugged machine — the TSA doing its best,” another source said.

Higher-ups at the Transportation Security Administration finally discovered the security boondoggle at 9:44 a.m. — leaving the Port Authority with no choice but to call for a complete evacuation of the international terminal that is home to British Airways, Cathay Pacific, United Airlines and others.

The extraordinary measure meant that two jumbo jets — including a San Francisco-bound United flight — had to return to the gate so passengers could be rescreened at a metal detector that was actually turned on.

The TSA would not confirm or deny that its detector had been unplugged, releasing a statement saying only that a metal detector suffered a “malfunction.”

Eight to 10 flights were delayed as a result of the power-cord bungle, sources said.
...
In scary twist, the source couldn’t be certain that every passenger who went through the powerless detector had been accounted for and hadn’t gotten on a flight.

The incident is just the latest in a long line of TSA fiascoes.

Test run? Inside man? Or was it just (ahem) “terminal stupidity”? And every person - each “possible terrorist” - who went through the dead scanner and got onto an airplane probably had close to half an hour to hide anything naughty they could have snuck in.

I’m so glad our beneficent government put the Patriot Act into place to strip us of all our unnecessary rights, and built the TSA to keep us all safe when we fly. Every last one of them is hired based only on their security skills, experience, honesty, spotless criminal past, and never-flagging attention to the smallest details; political correctness doesn’t come into play at all.

Alija Abdu Majed. Are you effing kidding me?

Posted by Drew458     on 06/26/2012 at 03:11 PM   
Filed Under: • Miscellaneous •  
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