I can totally see how a 9-year-old boy can slip through security and board a flight to Vegas without a ticket or boarding pass.

Around 9 a.m. or so, the boy hopped on a lightrail train to MSP, where he walked into Terminal 1. His parents didn’t notice him leave their north Minneapolis home.

The boy went through the screening process then boarded a Delta flight in Concourse C at 11:15 a.m. He also evaded Delta’s gate agent in Concourse C and made it on the plane and grabbed an empty seat.

The flight crew got suspicious in the air when they noticed the boy was not on their unattended minors list.

Once in Vegas, the boy was screened to determine he wasn’t a threat.

But the rank amateur didn’t get a single segment from the trip!

This statement from TSA makes absolutely no sense. I guess their press flack was on furlough:

The Transportation Security Administration is investigating whether they should reconfigure barriers.

“The TSA checkpoints are not there to stop people; they’re there to stop dangerous items. So we don’t know how this child got past that TSA screening point,” said Austin. “Presumably he got checked as he is supposed to and didn’t pose a threat to the safety of the aircraft he was on or any operations there, but he was someplace where he shouldn’t have been, and if that’s a vulnerability that should be closed off.”

It also seems that he is a thief:

Airport surveillance video shows the boy at the airport on both Wednesday and Thursday. On Wednesday, he grabbed a bag from the carousel and ordered lunch at a restaurant. He left without paying, and he left the bag. Nothing was stolen from it.

I’ll be making my first trip to MSP in January for a FedSoc talk at William Mitchell. Though, on second thought, why on earth am I going to Minnesota in January! And on Sky Team to boot! 🙂