Obviously very few have actually read what happened. The plane arrived in Melbourne in an 'unscreened' state. The passengers were told they would be escorted out of the terminal under guard as the whole terminal would have to be re-screened should they mingle with screened passengers. Only passengers that were boarding subsequent flights or wished to be in the terminal longer were required to rescreen.
The main question here is how a whole Dash-8 load of passengers was allowed to disembark into the Sydney terminal secure side without being screened. The QF statement makes it sound like one member of the public was let through, the statement from a passenger suggest the whole plane (inbound Orange flight) was not screened and only a passenger alerted authorities that a security breech had occured. The passengers version does make sense as Orange does not have screening procedures, so assuming it was a Dash-8-300 at worst it could be up to 50 unscreened passengers.
I can see how this could occur with the lack of gates at peak times for the QF terminal in Sydney sometimes leading to long delays. Put one aircraft on the wrong bay and suddenly a surge of unscreened passengers enter the terminal and you are now facing rescreening the entire thing. The other question is now, if it was only a member of the public that found the issue, has this issue occurred before and no one noticed....
This definitely warrants some form of investigation outside of QF. And if somebody is looking for mistakes under pressure leading to safety issues, this might just be the event to prove it. And a good one as nobody was hurt in the process.
Last edited by 43Inches; 9th Sep 2022 at 00:36.