Word: tsa
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...improving public safety,” 20-year-old Nathaniel T. Heatwole spent seven months over the course of 2003 smuggling box cutters, matches and bleach onto various Southwest Airlines flights. Following his highly illegal but completely undetected actions, Heatwole sent an email to the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) in which he acknowledged the criminal nature of the acts but claimed that his pseudo-terrorist doings were motivated by the desire to make the skies safer for the “air-traveling public.” He signed the email politely: “Sincerely, Nat Heatwole...
Lucky for Nat, the TSA and the FBI—though they certainly didn’t approve of his conduct—found Nat’s personal reconnaissance to be a valuable source of information. Since his arrest last fall, Heatwole has talked to the TSA about the holes in the airport screening process, and he has even provided them with a videotape with training instructions for those employees who man the X-rays. And while normally the penalty for carrying a concealed dangerous weapon aboard an aircraft is 10 years in prison, Nat will probably...
...this case, the FFDO, who had followed TSA regulations precisely, immediately informed the authorities, who were also unable to locate the gun. This situation, according to security professionals, was much worse than the cases of guns that have been discovered on passengers at screening checkpoints because the FFDO?s gun was already in the so called "secure" area of the airport...
...Captain Duane Woerth, president of the Airline Pilots' Association, said the TSA should learn from the incident. "This is exactly what we warned TSA about when they came out with their rule on pilots having to carry their firearms in lockboxes. The lockbox was a bad idea from the start and TSA needs to get rid of it." A TSA official acknowledged that the incident was of concern to the agency and was under investigation. He also said the TSA had no immediate plans to overhaul its policy on how off-duty pilots transport their weapons...
...litany of other lockbox mishaps. Some pilots have reportedly had to chase their lockboxes as they were being carted away by unknowing baggage handlers. One pilot said that on six separate occasions his lockbox was not where he had properly put it on an airplane. If the TSA isn't listening to pilot concerns, it may soon be answering to Congress. Several congressmen, according to sources from pilot groups, are preparing legislation that will force the TSA to amend the weapons carriage policy...