BANGLADESH

On Tuesday (03/01), a suspected baggage thief was arrested at Dhaka Airport (DAC) after he was spotted leaving the terminal with a large flat screen television in his arms. In a follow up operation, Police carried out a number of searches, and recovered more than 1000 stolen items, including blankets, televisions, bags, shoes, cosmetics & pressure cookers. (I don’t know either!). Police say that the thief was making enough money to be able to fund private education for his two children in England. Media sources claims that up to 40% of all passengers using DAC have been the victim of baggage theft.


IRELAND

On Sunday (01/01), a Thomas Cook Scandinavia B752, operating between Tenerife Reina Sofia (TFS) and Manchester (MAN) was forced to divert to Cork (ORK) as a result of a disruptive passenger event. The incident began when an apparently mentally ill male pax became delusional on board the flight and was convinced that another passenger was trying to inject him with drugs and kill him. The man was handcuffed and restrained in his seat by crew assisted by other pax. The flight landed safely at ORK, where the disruptive Finnish passenger was arrested. He later pleaded guilty to engaging in threatening, abusive or insulting behaviour likely to lead to a breach of the peace on board an aircraft, and was fined €500. He was released into the custody of his family who made arrangements for his onward travel to Finland.


TANZANIA

On Friday (06/01), five heavily armed men attempted to steal a stack of gold bars from an aircraft operated by mining company AngloGold Ashanti, at an airstrip close to a gold mine near Mwanza. The gang, who were armed with automatic weapons and hand grenades, attempted to steal 587kg of gold bars. One of the robbers was killed in an exchange of gunfire with security officers and the Police.


UNITED KINGDOM

On Friday (06/01), it was reported that a bid for the early release of Nezar Hindawi was rejected by a Parole Board. Hindawi received a 45 year prison sentence after he was convicted of plotting to blow up an El-Al B747 operating between London Heathrow (LHR) and Tel Aviv (TLV) in 1986 by concealing an IED in his pregnant fiancee's baggage. The Board decided that it was not yet safe for Hindawi to be released.


UNITED STATES

On Tuesday (03/01), a court in Los Angeles heard how a woman apparently angry about being dumped by a man with whom she had an affair, made a phone call to United Airlines claiming that a Frenchman and his friends posed an unspecific threat to a flight which was preparing to depart from Los Angeles (LAX). The woman pleaded guilty to making a bogus threat to an airline. The court was told that the woman was seeking revenge on the man who had also unfriended her on Facebook.


On Tuesday (03/01), an American Eagle CRJ-700 operating between Nashville (BNA) and New York La Guardia (LGA) was diverted to Raleigh Durham (RDU) after the discovery of two unclaimed cell phones in an onboard restroom. Nobody claimed the items, despite repeated attempts by the crew to identify the owner. The aircraft landed safely, and the owner of the phones was identified. He was offloaded at the request of the PIC.


On Tuesday (03/01), an Air France B772 operating between Houston (IAH) and Paris (CDG) was forced to return to IAH, 30 minutes into the flight, after an unattended mobile phone was discovered on board. Repeated attempts by the crew to identify the owner, failed. The phone was handed to TSA officials, and the aircraft departed after a five hour delay.


On Tuesday (03/01), papers filed with a a court in Texas claim that a US Army special forces engineer, arrested for attempting to take military explosives on board an American Eagle flight operating from Midland Airport (MAF), told authorities he had forgotten they were in his bag and did not notice them when he packed. The pax told authorities that his Special Forces Team procedure was to carry at least two blocks of C-4 on any operation and when he packed his bags to leave from Afghanistan in April 2011 he did not recall the explosives being there. It was also revealed that on December 24th, screeners at an unidentified airport confiscated a smoke grenade from his baggage.


On Wednesday (04/01), a TSA Behaviour Detection Officer at Buffalo Niagara Airport (BUF) was sent to prison for two years after she admitted using her job to help a local drug gang smuggle cash by not passing it through security screening. She also admitted warning two drug smugglers of a covert DEA operation that was targeting them when they passed through BUF.


On Thursday (05/01), the TSA blog published details of the top 10 prohibited, dangerous and strange articles seized from pax at US airports during 2011. Click here for the article.


TSA Weekly Stats (26th Dec - 1st Jan 2012)

1 artfully concealed prohibited items found at checkpoints

23 firearms found at checkpoints

1 pax were arrested after investigations of suspicious behavior or fraudulent travel documents


AND FINALLY!

An adult education teacher kept a 40mm shell as a paperweight on his desk. One spring morning, while taking a class, an insect crawled across his desk. He picked up the "inert" artillery shell and slammed it onto the insect. The impact set off the primer, and the resulting explosion caused him burns and shrapnel wounds on his hand, forearm, and torso. No one else in the classroom was hurt. The insect did not survive the experience.