Security scare nothing but false alarm

An American Airlines flight from Los Angeles International Airport bound for London Heathrow was diverted to John F. Kennedy International Airport mid-route due to a possible security breach reported by a flight attendant last week.

The plane landed at JFK after a flight attendant became suspicious that a passenger hadn’t passed through full security measures and had boarded the aircraft from an employee bus. The passenger in question was later deemed harmless, but Tim Smith, a spokesman for American Airlines said, “We would always take the conservative route and get the incident or concern in front of the law enforcement people who are best equipped to handle it.”

The plane landed in New York and the 230 passengers were subjected to security procedures once again. The man was questioned and found to be an ordinary passenger and the flight attendant’s concern that he by-passed security was dismissed.

Christopher White, a spokesman for the Transportation Security Administration said, “He was a regular passenger with a verified boarding pass, not an employee. There’s nothing to indicate that he used employee transportation.”

Despite the false alarm, the usual whisperings of terrorism bulged the fruit of the paranoia grapevine and as usual, the Department of Homeland Security took the chance to release more unnecessary fear mongering statements like the whimsical musings from Michael Chertoff, who had seen in his private crystal ball an impending threat and had what 80’s rock band Devo would describe as a ‘gut feeling’ that a terrorist plot would hatch sometime this summer.

www.aa.com