An unticketed passenger was arrested on Christmas Eve after boarding a Delta Airlines flight at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport without proper documentation. The passenger had managed to bypass security and board flight 487, which was headed for Hawaii, around 1 p.m. on Tuesday, as reported by KOMO News.
Once the anomaly was detected, the plane promptly returned to the gate, and the passenger was removed by the Port of Seattle Police. This security breach marks the second such incident involving an unticketed individual on a Delta flight in recent weeks, with a previous attempt to reach France on the same airline last month. In a statement obtained by AviationA2Z, Delta Airlines emphasized that there are "no matters more important than safety and security."
Consequently, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) ramped up security measures by conducting additional screenings of all passengers, which resulted in a delay of two hours for the Honolulu-bound flight. Operated by a comparatively new Airbus A321neo, registered as N538DN, the airline's security loopholes have come under scrutiny following the repeat of such an incident.
Delta's preliminary investigation indicates that the stowaway managed to slip through gate security without a boarding pass. "As there are no matters more important than safety and security, Delta people followed procedures to have an unticketed passenger removed from the flight and then apprehended," the airline expressed in a statement shared with ABC News. Measures to prevent such occurrences in the future are yet to be disclosed by the airline.
_landing_at_Amsterdam_Airport_Schiphol_(1).jpg){kind=link}