Archive for October, 2007
Wednesday, October 10th, 2007
Incident on Frontier Airlines Flight 623
In August, I reported on two, separate aviation-security incidents that took place on Frontier Airlines flights in a 36-hour period. Now there has been a third incident. Passenger Timothy Furnas, a business executive from the west coast, described what happened on Frontier Airlines Flight 623 — flying from Denver to Detroit last Sunday — in […]
No Comments » - Posted in U.S. Homeland Security by Annie Jacobsen
Friday, October 5th, 2007
Loaded Gun at Tucson Airport
A loaded gun was discovered by a cleaning person inside a secure area at the Tucson International Airport on Thursday. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) ordered the west wing of the airport to be evacuated after the security breach was discovered. The gun, found in a bathroom trashcan, had apparently made its way past multiple […]
No Comments » - Posted in Airport Security & Screening by Annie Jacobsen
Thursday, October 4th, 2007
Dismantled Cellphone Found, Jet Evacuates, Bomb Squad Called to Sea-Tac Airport
A disassembled cell phone wrapped in a towel — unclaimed and deemed suspicious by Alaska Airlines crew — was found on flight 383 from San Jose, California to Seatac, Washington earlier today. Officials say flight crew tried to identify who owned the item; no one claimed to know anything about it. The flight evacuated at […]
No Comments » - Posted in Airport Security & Screening by Annie Jacobsen
Wednesday, October 3rd, 2007
Gotbaum Death at Phoenix Airport: Police Update
This just in from Sgt. Andy Hill of the Phoenix Police Department — on the death of airport passenger Carol Anne Gotbaum. As I wrote in my Pajamas Media piece, "Fear of Dying While Flying," what happened at the Phoenix airport last Friday does not indicate that America has become a police state and that […]
No Comments » - Posted in Airport Security & Screening by Annie Jacobsen
Tuesday, October 2nd, 2007
TSA: Threat From Remote Controlled Toys
When two Egyptian students, Ahmed Mohamed and Yousef Megahed, were indicted last August on terrorism charges, federal prosecutors revealed that Mohamed had produced a 12-minute, Arabic-language video illustrating how to make a bomb using a "remote control device for toys" as the detonator.
Yesterday, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) announced that it's upping scrutiny on airline […]
No Comments » - Posted in Airport Security & Screening by Annie Jacobsen
Monday, October 1st, 2007
Dressed to Kill: Why Air Marshals Are Concerned
A male suicide bomber, dressed as a woman and wearing a burqa, blew himself up at a police checkpoint in northern Pakistan today, killing sixteen people and wounding twenty-nine. From Agence France-Presse:
"A man disguised in a burqa got out of an autorickshaw when police stopped the vehicle for a search at a checkpoint. He […]
No Comments » - Posted in Federal Air Marshals by Annie Jacobsen
Monday, October 1st, 2007
Fear of Dying While Flying
The top story at CNN for the last twenty-four hours has been about airport passenger Carol Ann Gotbaum, a 45-year old woman who was found dead in a Phoenix airport holding cell after being arrested on a disorderly conduct charge. Witnesses at the airport say Gotbaum had been running around the concourse "yelling and screaming." […]