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Passenger allegedly boards flight from Nashville to Los Angeles without a ticket

https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/airline-news/2024/02/15/passenger-alleged-flight-no-ticket/72616568007/

A woman allegedly boarded a flight from Nashville to Los Angeles without a boarding pass earlier this month.

Passenger allegedly boards flight from Nashville to Los Angeles without a ticket

A woman allegedly boarded a flight from Nashville to Los Angeles without a boarding pass earlier this month.

The flyer bypassed the boarding pass and ID check by walking through an unmanned section of the security checkpoint, the Transportation Security Administration said.

14 comments

ellaella_ayayay

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So I get yelled at for forgetting to take out my kindle, while they're missing a whole person slipping past security. Smh

Nougat

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Meaning TSA checkpoint, which you need a boarding pass and matching ID to get through, then also gate security.

HurlingDurling

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Took a flight out of the country 2 weeks ago, I was not asked for a ticket by tsa at any moment. I was just asked for my ticket at the gate

cali_ash

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When you end up on national news because of fare dodging.

HurlingDurling

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When you end up on national news because you are fed up with airlines charging outrageous prices for the dunbest fucking routes

BradleyUffner

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This is like the least news worthy thing I have ever read.

No_Ones_Slick_Like_Gaston

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Dude when the whole security theater of TSA and 'the terrorists' who want to destroy the US has been pandering for twenty years, these are news.

Socsa

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This doesn't surprise me tbh. These medium sized airports at off hours will have like one of 6 TSA lanes opened with four agents being kept busy working the single line. There's a ton of barely supervised roped off area. At my local airport I could definitely skip the document check by casually ducking under the rope into the bin line. Biggest risk would be someone else in the line looking up from their phones at the wrong time.

ramble81

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Sovereign citizen exercising their right to travel.

UNWILLING_PARTICIPANT

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How is this news

ArtieShaw

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I fly a lot for work and I also do a fair bit of failure point and risk analysis as part of my job, so this is interesting to me in a couple of ways. Airports and airlines honestly do a decent job of checking that the people on the plane are the ones who are supposed to be there. A failure like this is reasonably unusual.

she got through physical security (baggage and carry-on checks)
to accomplish that, all she had to do was dodge the ID and boarding pass check.

That seems pretty feasible. If she was dressed vaguely like an employee it might have helped, but that's just speculation. We've all seen the gorilla walk through the ball game - after we were told to look for him - so it's not strictly necessary.

I have a harder time understanding how she could have boarded through the passenger line where they scan the passes.

I also have a slightly harder time understanding how she could have found a plane with open seats. I can view a seat map 12 hours ahead of boarding and see a plane with 10 open seats. When it comes time to board they're completely full. But - part of this is because the airline shuttles regional pilots to their main hub via any available seat and they do it at the last minute. And here's my further speculation: a flight from Nashville to LA is a long haul so this shuttling probably wouldn't come into play. If she checked seat availability in advance, it probably would have been accurate and she could probably help herself to a seat that appeared open.

The final hurdle seems to be the one that caught her. The article doesn't say exactly, but it says that authorities were waiting on the ground. Stewards have a flight manifest that lists every passenger by name and by seat. On rare occasions I've seen them checking the manifest as passengers board - for example, on overbooked flights where they've sold steward seats for take off and landing to passengers and they expect stewards to squat in the aisle. I've also heard anecdotally that if you're acting like a weirdo they'll look up who you are.

tldr: I could (and do!) give zero fucks about who won Sunday's sports match, but can conceive of why it might be news, of of interest, to some people.

Jackcooper

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Article doesn't explain how she got from the gate to the plane though

yamanii

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Queen

Professorozone

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So glad they're giving people full body scans. I feel soooo much safer.