The few times we’ve air-traveled post-911 with minors, I’ve been grateful for this loophole:
Loophole allows minors to bypass airport security
When an Oregon teen talked his way onto an airplane bound for Chicago last weekend, he unknowingly revealed a little-known hole in airport security.
Kids don’t have to show photo ID.
That may come as a surprise to many air travelers. Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, travelers are accustomed to removing their shoes, not carrying liquids and otherwise coping with strict protocols of airport security.
But when it comes to conducting minors through airports, security and efforts to preserve air passenger convenience intersect in a highly unusual way.
The Transportation Security Administration requires all air travelers 18 and older to show a boarding pass and government-issued photo ID to enter security screening.
But minors generally don’t have government-issued IDs. So security officers don’t expect them to have one, says Dwayne Baird, the TSA’s public information officer for the Northwest.
That makes sense enough. But….
In the case of minors, no one is responsible for making sure that the person using the boarding pass is in fact the person named on the pass.
On Oct. 3, that gap allowed a 6-foot-2, 14-year-old boy from Canby to pass through airport security with a boarding pass that had his mother’s name, Virginia Davis, on it.
A TSA screener asked Dakota M. Davis, “Are you Virginia?”
“Uh-huh,” he mumbled, and advanced into the security checkpoint line and onto a flight to Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport.
Hold it, hold it, hold it!
A fourteen-year-old guy says he’s Virginia and that’s was good enough for security?! 😯
I wonder what the screener would have done if Mr. Teen-on-a-Hike had answered in the negative.
“As long as you can get through that X-ray machine over there, I don’t care if your name is West Virginia or South Dakota. Have a nice flight.”
Great.
The identification loophole doesn’t worry the TSA, Baird says. Even if you’re not really the person named on your boarding pass, the TSA says, you will still have to go through security screening.
“Every passenger regardless of age is properly screened through multiple layers of security and deemed not to be a threat to aviation security before getting on a flight,” Baird says.
Now wait just an hour and a half.
If it doesn’t matter that the person boarding isn’t the person named on the boarding pass, why bother with “Are you Virginia?” questions?
🙄
And “multiple layers of security”? Name them.
In my flying I recall going through one layer of security. What am I missing here?
(Is Al-Qaeda recruiting baby-faced suicide bombers and hijackers these days? Or maybe they’re done recruiting and are in the Probing What We Can Get Away With At Airport Security state.)
Have a nice day. 😯