The US Transportation Security Administration may levy civil penalties against American Eagle Airlines after one of its inspectors was able to gain access to the interior of seven out of nine Embraer ERJ-145 aircraft at Chicago O'Hare International airport on 19 August.
Inspection results are being reviewed and depending on the outcome, TSA says it could penalize the regional. A TSA spokeswoman declined to explain the administration's reasoning behind a potential penalty.
An American Eagle spokeswoman says, "We are unaware of any violations," adding she is confident the airline followed procedures for securing aircraft overnight.
However, the carrier says in a statement it is concerned about the "unorthodox inspection techniques" used at roughly 0530 on 19 August.
An airline employee noticed a man hoisting himself up to the jet bridge close to an ERJ-145 using the pitot tube on the side of the aircraft near the closed and locked cockpit door for leverage, an American Eagle spokeswoman says.
The TSA agent admitted to using the same procedure on a total of nine aircraft, all of which the airline then pulled out of service. The agent gained interior access to seven of the regional jets. Inspections, which took up to two hours to complete, revealed no damage and all aircraft were back into service by 1045 on 19 August, the airline says
"If not observed by vigilant Eagle employees in Chicago, the actions of this inspector would have been unknown and could have jeopardized the safety of our customers and crew because of potential damage to the sensitive equipment mounted on the aircraft fuselage," the carrier says in a statement.
TSA says it was not its intent to cause delay or potential damage to the aircraft as a result of its inspections.
"TSA took immediate steps to re-enforce education about sensitive equipment located on the exterior of a plane," the administration adds.
Source: Air Transport Intelligence news
Are you kidding me? There are no locks on the planes, you can open them up from the ground...ie. there is no need to climb on the multi million dollar equipment to open the door. If tsa did its job, then the airport would already be secure. And what is this about the tsa agent being trained? He was trained to climb on the airplane? Yet no one told him how to open the door, or that the door does not lock. Pilots and flight attendents go through months of training to familiarize themselves with the one specific aircraft they will be operating. yet tsa thinks that they can, literally, climb aboard any plane and make "security checks". I would like to see the certificate of training that this guy had, as I really don't believe any training for such checks was ever provided.
Yet this agency has no one it has to answer to. There is no one that will be held liable for this and the other ridiculous policies held in place by the agency. And more and more power is granted (such as boarding the planes) to agents... for what? They are suppose to make sure nothing dangerous gets through security, yet they fail their random checks and audits time and time again. We've all probably gotten something through that we shouldn't have. I accidently brought a pocket knife with me... Nobody said a thing...perhaps they were too busy trying to get into unlocked planes. And another thing, how come he was only able to only get into 9 of the 14 planes- THEY WERE ALL UNLOCKED (THEY DONT HAVE LOCKING DEVICES)!!!
It's outrageous! Why are there so many TSA people anyway, it takes one person to look at the xray machine and one person to restack the bins, and one person to watch you walk through the metal detector, maybe a couple to frisk you on their 'random' checks. But it takes at least 6 to walk up and down the hall of Chicago Ohare terminal, side by side, at a snails pace and slow everyone else down.
here are the qualifications for a tsa screener position:
http://jobsearch.usajobs.gov/getjob.asp?JobID=63027377&brd=3876&AVSDM=2008%2D07%2D23+11%3A38%3A52&sort=rv&vw=d&q=tsa&Logo=0&pg=5&ss=0&customapplicant=15513%2C15514%2C15515%2C15669%2C15523%2C15512%2C15516%2C45575&TabNum=3&rc=3
Now these folks have a government job (43,000 tsa workders), and will have preferential hiring status over any other non-government worker for any other government position. this is what our taxes go to, this is part of the increase in our plane tickets.
Oh and what about the do not fly list, a whole other tsa debaucle. How do people get on this list? How do you get off of it? There is no one that knows or is willing to admit that they know the answers to these questions.
I am afraid.
Posted by: tast | August 23, 2008 at 09:13 PM