We interrupt this serious consideration of our future presidents with Yet Another story of a stupid (and yet unnamed) TSA employee. In this case, an inspector attempted to break into planes on the tarmac. According to one report, the inspector “breached” seven out of nine planes. But in process he may have damaged sensitive avionics. This caused a delay O’Hare International Airport while the airline took corrective measures. This was stupid but not tragic because nobody was hurt– this time. It could have been both stupid and tragic had the inspector touched something he shouldn’t have, broken something, and contributed to the loss of life. Wouldn’t that have been rich?
The really stupid part is that it is not a secret that the overwhelming majority of effort to secure airplanes on the tarmac is devoted to keeping the wrong people off of the tarmac in the first place. That is largely not the responsibility of the airline, but that of the airport and the TSA. Once the inspector was on the tarmac and unsupervised, the game should have ended. It didn’t.