A traveler boarded a plane at Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport and flew all the way to Tokyo with a firearm on their person earlier this month, CNN reports.
The Transportation Security Administration release a statement about the traveler bringing a weapon onboard.
“TSA has determined standard procedures were not followed and a passenger did in fact pass through a standard screening TSA checkpoint with a firearm at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport on the morning of January 3.”
Apparently it was the traveler who brought the weapon to the attention of officials.“...upon the customer’s disclosure, the airline reported the incident to the TSA,” Delta Airlines told CNN.
While TSA agents are among the 800,000 government employees working without pay, the federal agency says that this incident wasn’t indicative of employees skimping on the security while waiting for their paychecks and insist that flying is still very safe.
Certainly that depends on how you look at it since, even before the shutdown, the TSA had a tough time identifying weapons going through security. In 2010, a man brought a loaded .40 gun on to a plane and the TSA still misses 70 percent of dangerous contraband that passes through its security gates, as Forbes reported in 2017. That’s actually a drastic improvement over 2015, when airport screeners missed 95 percent of weapons sent through airport security meant to test their observational skills.
The TSA and travel experts told CNN that it is still safe to fly and that those who let the gun slip by security will be held “appropriately accountable.” I don’t know about you, but I feel safer already.