On Monday morning at about 6 a.m., 11 passengers walked through a Transportation Security Administration security lane at New York JFK airport's Terminal 5 without being screened by TSA agents, law enforcement officials said. The TSA waited two hours to inform Port Authority police, and in that time, the 11 passengers boarded their planes and flew off. Three of the passengers were apparently not screened even after they set off the metal detector, though the Port Authority police say three of the 11 people were identified through security camera footage and checked when they landed in California. The other eight passengers have not yet been identified.
The TSA said it is reviewing the security lapse, but is "confident" that the breach "presents minimal risk to the aviation transportation system," in part because the passengers' bags were screened and they passed by a K9 team. Other people are less sanguine about 11 people boarding airplanes without being checked for weapons. Those critics include the New York Daily News:
You can learn more about the incident in the NBC Nightly News report below. Peter Weber
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Continue reading for free
We hope you're enjoying The Week's refreshingly open-minded journalism.
Subscribed to The Week? Register your account with the same email as your subscription.