9-year-old boy flies to Vegas without a ticket. System error or human error?

Last week, a 9-year-old boy managed to fly from Minneapolis to Las Vegas by himself without a ticket on Delta Airlines.

According to a CNN report, Delta is reviewing its "policies and procedures to make sure something like this does not happen again." This is the predictable response by most organizations when a screw-up occurs.

Do you think this was a system error or a human error?

I favor the latter. And the errors weren't confined only to Delta employees.

How many people had to have not followed established procedures for the child to have pulled this off?

At most airports, you can't even enter the security line without showing your boarding pass and ID. Children under 18 are not required to carry identification, but someone from the TSA had to have overlooked the fact that the boy had no boarding pass to scribble on.

Another possible check might have occurred as he passed through the metal detector by himself.

At the gate when boarding starts, an agent either marks each boarding pass or scans its bar code to tally the number of passengers on board. Obviously, the boy didn't have a pass so that did not happen.

Once he got on the plane, he had to have picked a seat at random. He would not have known which seats were unassigned. It is highly likely that he had to change seats at least once or twice. Again no one noticed that he didn't have a boarding pass.

The story says the flight crew became suspicious when the plane was in the air. They eventually noticed that he was an accompanied minor that they had not been made aware of.

What happened to the head count prior to closing the door? Most flights I've been on do not leave the gate until the flight attendants have walked through the cabin and counted the number of seated passengers.

Rather than a review of policies and procedures, the airline and the TSA should "counsel" the personnel involved in this event.

For other examples of human errors being thought of as system errors, type "system errors" in the search field of this blog.

TSA “Security Theater” becomes “Theater of the Absurd”

Three recent events serve as stark examples of the ridiculous level to which the Transportation Security Administration has sunk in its elaborate charade in the name of stopping terrorism.

Let’s start with a visual. This photo shows a TSA security pat down being conducted on an unlikely terrorist [Syriana notwithstanding], actor George Clooney. How silly can it get?

The next two episodes aren’t silly.

A 4-year-old child was fingered as possibly smuggling a gun to her grandmother, who needed a pat down after setting off the metal detector twice. The child had passed through the detector without incident. She went to where her grandmother was sitting and gave her a hug. Because of that, the child was identified as a “high-security” threat and frisked while sobbing hysterically. Remember, she had already gone through the metal detector. She was wearing leggings and a short-sleeved shirt. I suppose she could have been hiding a non-metallic gun in her rectum, but how big a gun could it have been? She was already inside the secure zone anyway. At least a body cavity search was not done.

The third case involves a 95-year-old retired Air Force officer and his 85-year-old friend, who both set off the metal detector due to joint replacements. Pat downs were deemed necessary. The man had $300.00 in bills and potentially incendiary Kleenex in his pocket and was asked to put the items in a bin so they could go through the X-ray scanner. After he was thoroughly searched, the money had gone missing. The entire scenario took over an hour and the pair nearly missed their flight. The TSA has yet to provide an explanation for what happened to the two travelers and their money. Oh, the security tapes were “too blurry” to be of use.

Is there no end to the madness? Couldn’t the personnel and resources wasted on these embarrassing incidents be put to better use?

Here's a similar rant of mine about the TSA from 18 months ago. Nothing has changed.

Acknowledgement: Thanks to @drval and @David_Dobbs for alerting me to the third case.

Don't Scan Me, Bro'

The huge uproar about full body scans and harassment of air travelers misses an important point. Yes, there is concern about invasion of privacy, perceived near sexual assault and radiation exposure. Even mild-mannered Captain Sullenberger commented on the absurd practice of x-raying and searching pilots. For God’s sake, if a pilot wanted to make mischief, she wouldn’t need to put C4 in her bra. She could fly the damn thing into a building herself.

My problem with all of this is that the government seems to have an endless reservoir of bad ideas, starting with the thankfully now obsolete question, “Did anyone else pack your bags?” Did they really expect someone to say, “Well, a man named Ahmed knocked on my door this morning and offered to help me pack, so I let him.” And we always seem to be reactive rather than proactive. A guy hides explosives in his shoe in 2001 and to this day, we all have to take off our shoes at the airport. Unless this shoe removal is taking place everywhere else in the world, it seems to me that asking grandma to put her flip-flops on the scanner is unlikely to stop a terrorist. Last year another guy hides explosives in his underwear, and now we need to scan everyone’s underwear and frisk 3-year-olds. Are these procedures really thought to be effective or are they simply window dressing to reassure the public that stern measures are being taken?

Memo to the TSA: they’re going to try something other than a bomb in a shoe or Jockey shorts next time. Good intelligence such as the discovery of the plot to send explosives via cargo planes last month will do far more than all of the airport screening measures.

The public is fighting back. Just Google “TSA boycott” and see that a number of people are calling for a boycott of air travel altogether. Over 5000 people “Like” a Facebook page suggesting that all passengers opt out of the full body scan on 11/24 (the day before Thanksgiving), although I am not sure just how that will hurt the TSA. And there are courageous individuals like John Tyner ("If you touch my junk, I'm gonna have you arrested.") refusing to play the game at all. But of course, he did not get to take his trip either.

For me, the terrorists have already won. If their goal was to disrupt air travel and cause the American people to lose confidence in their government, they have succeeded.

[TSA logo by Ogel Volk via The Consumerist]