Thursday, April 20, 2006

Not a Warm Fuzzy

This does not make a regular traveler through the Atlanta airport feel all that good.

Federal officials say they never found a suspicious device that a screener said had appeared on an X-ray screen -- leading to a halt in flights at Atlanta's airport for more than an hour. Officials stopped planes from leaving Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport and closed down all security checkpoints for about two hours yesterday afternoon. Willie Williams, the airport's Transportation Security Administration director, said a screener notified her supervisor of a suspicious image on the monitor of her X-ray machine at 1:15 p.m. T-S-A screeners hand-searched all bags that were on the machine's conveyor belt, but no dangerous items were found. Williams declined to say what the image appeared to be.

I think it might be time to do a little review of the procedures that should be followed when a screener spots something suspicious. Shutting down the busiest airport in the world for a couple of hours with nothing to show for it is just a little embarrassing. Eh?

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