I read a very disturbing news article today. A nine year old runaway boy managed to get through airport security and get on not one but two flights before he was finally caught.
This Monday, the boy walked up to the Southwest Airlines ticket counter at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and was given a boarding pass after he lied and said his mother was already over in the boarding area. Apparently, the boy's information matched a paid, ticketless reservation for the flight. So the agent gave the boy a boarding pass and he got on the plane. He made it through airport security, not needing picture identification because of his age, and I'm assuming he had no more than the regulation three ounces of any liquid with him or else he would have been stopped for sure. He flew to Phoenix, then caught another plane to San Antonio, where airline employees stopped him from boarding a flight to Dallas because he couldn't explain why he didn't have a boarding pass.
Southwest employees first thought he was lost, then called police when they realized he was lying, and he was taken to the police station when he persisted in giving false information about his age, name and where he had come from, officers said. Police determined early Tuesday that he fit the description of a missing person report his mother had filed. Apparently the boy didn't like where his family had moved, and wanted to runaway to see his grandfather in Dallas.
As I said earlier, this disturbs me, mainly because in one week I will be flying on Southwest Airlines to and from Las Vegas. In a day when airlines will not even let people take Chapstick on a plane any more, this future thug managed to get through airport security and get on a plane. I can't be sure about the competency of the airport and airline workers, but I would think that they've heard on the news about how terrorists strap bombs on little kids and send them off to do their dirty work.
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