BOSTON — A breach that allowed 11 people to walk through an unattended security checkpoint lane at one of the nation’s busiest airports has some travelers scratching their heads about how this could happen even with the enhanced security measures put in place after the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
The incident Monday at New York’s Kennedy Airport is being investigated by the Transportation Security Administration, the agency that was created to protect the nation’s airports after the 2001 attacks. The TSA said three passengers did not receive required secondary screening after they set off the metal detector at the unmanned checkpoint lane.
At Boston’s Logan International Airport — a staging point for two of the jetliners used in the 9/11 attacks — some travelers said they were surprised that a checkpoint lane could be left unattended at any airport.
“Mistakes happen, but they’re (TSA workers) supposed to be there to protect our lives,” said Kylie Welsh, who returned to Boston from a trip to Pittsburgh on Wednesday.
The TSA said in Monday’s incident that all carry-on bags received required screening and that it was confident the incident presented “minimal risk to the aviation transportation system.”
Post-9/11 security procedures include body scans, pat-downs, fortified cockpit doors, screening of checked luggage for explosives and a ban on large containers of liquids to prevent anyone from making an improvised explosive device during flight.
This isn’t the first time travelers who weren’t properly screened slipped through airport security.
In 2002, hundreds of passengers were evacuated at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in Florida after a metal detector was found unplugged. About 300 passengers were rescreened and allowed back into the concourse.
In 2014, a woman who had been arrested multiple times for trying to sneak onto planes managed to slip onto a flight from San Jose to Los Angeles without a ticket.
In 2015, a Texas man walked through a security checkpoint without a ticket or identification at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport and ran onto an American Airlines flight bound for Guatemala. He was arrested for criminal trespassing.
Bennet Waters, a former deputy assistant administrator of TSA, said the incident at JFK should not cause a crisis of confidence in airport security. “I think it’s fair for the flying public to be concerned any time a (security) layer is breached, but I think that concern has to be bound with the realization that there are multiple layers in the TSA security regime in use at all times,” Waters said. “In fact, the system is designed so that a failure in any one layer does not constitute a failure in the system at large.”