"TSA says screener goof caused evacuations"

Wednesday, November 24, 2004

TSA says screener goof caused evacuation 
BY MARK J. KONKOL
The Chicago (IL) Sun-Times


Airport passenger screeners, not a computer glitch, were to blame for the
false-alarm evacuations of Midway Airport and two other airports earlier
this month, federal authorities said. 

Originally, Transportation Security Administration officials said software
had faltered in a computer program aimed at making sure screeners are paying
attention at airport checkpoints.

But an inspection of those baggage screening machines at Midway,
Washington's Dulles International and Miami International airports
determined screeners didn't follow proper procedure in logging off the
machine during a shift change. 

That allowed archived images of weapons -- a grenade at Midway and guns in
Washington and Miami -- that were saved for training purposes to be
displayed when other bags were scanned, TSA spokeswoman Amy von Walter said.


"For training purposes we allow screeners to keep [images] of real objects
for training purposes. Unfortunately in these cases the archived image was
pulled up and not closed out." she said. 

"When the image was there for the next screener it led to confusion over
whether it was a real object."

Von Walter said the screeners to blame for the three evacuations will be
sent to "remedial training" as a reminder to close out those archived
images. It's unclear if any of them will be disciplined for their mistakes,
she said. 

Regardless of the cause, Chicago officials say they will still ask the
federal government to reimburse the city for its police response to the
Midway evacuation Nov. 15. City officials said they are still trying to
determine how much it cost to respond to the evacuation call. 

"We feel if this [problem] happened once it was a mistake, but when it
happened twice [the FAA] should have notified all airports. We probably
would have handled it differently," aviation department spokeswoman Annette
Martinez said. "We incurred a lot of cost and inconvenienced passengers
traveling that day."

Von Walter said the evacuation call was the right one, saying the TSA has a
"duty to investigate any question of a possible weapon on the secure side of
an airport."

The TSA, however, is looking to make software improvements aimed at
preventing similar occurrences, von Walter said.


 Do you have an opinion about this story?
Share it with other readers in our CAA Discussion Forums

http://www.californiaaviation.org/dcfp/dcboard.php


*****************************************