Box cutters. Remember those? The seemingly innocuous devices that the September 11 terrorists used to take over the planes they hijacked, thereby sparking the birth of the Transportation Security Administration? You’d think TSA employees would be on the lookout for those devices in particular, as they X-ray our bags and pat us down or caress our lumpy naked bodies with their eyes. And most of them probably are, but not a few security officials at JFK, who let slip a bag full of not one, but three box cutters onto a JetBlue flight to the Dominican Republic. The knives were so loosely placed on top of flier Eusebio D. Peraltalajara’s belongings that they fell out of his bag when he stowed it on board the plane. (Naturally, a flight attendant was not delighted to see them fall to the floor of the aisle — he snatched them up, and the plane was delayed for three hours as it had to be searched for bombs.) The TSA employees who missed the items have been reprimanded and are going through remedial training. Meanwhile, Peraltalajara has apologized — he says he works in a manufacturing plant in Secaucus and had the box cutters in his bag because he spends much of his work time … cutting boxes.
TSA Staff Jet Blew It [NYP]
