Hobby Airport Screeners Disciplined Over Lapse

After we showed you KHOU's look at airport screeners' jobs, a related tale is reported in today's Chronicle.

A July 31 episode in which a New York resident was arrested after walking through a totally empty security checkpoint at Houston's Hobby Airport has led to disciplinary action against the team of screeners on duty at the time and to dire warnings from TSA officials, who call the mistake a "serious problem", according to the Chronicle. (The airport, predictably, takes a less doomful view of things, calling the incident only a "lapse".)

The man, who walked through the checkpoint with his four year old daughter, was asked to leave his plane and charged with criminsal tresspass: he spent 10 hours in jail. He had been concerned about missign his plane when he came to the unstaffed security station.

"I waited and looked around, then went through," he said. "Someone came out and started yelling at me and said I can't do that."
TSA officials agree that Raymond voluntarily returned to the screening area and walked through the metal detector.
"(The TSA agent) never told him to wait," Pradia said. "He asked if she wanted to search him and she said she didn't want to."

This incident comes in the wake of one five weeks earlier in which screeners allowed a Jordanian immigrant with suspected bomb parts in his carry on luggage to pass through to his plane.

As for us, we'll take IAH.