Boxcutters found again - PHL and BOS

[Airbubba]

Time to round up the usual suspects...

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Box Cutter Discovered On Plane In Philadelphia

POSTED: 9:31 p.m. EST October 28, 2003

PHILADELPHIA -- The FBI is holding a US Airways plane in Philadelphia after a box cutter was found on board.

A passenger discovered the cutter just before takeoff for Phoenix. Passengers were evacuated from that plane and another plane completed the flight.

The flight had just landed in Philadelphia from Houston late Tuesday when the box cutter was found.

http://www.nbc10.com/travelgetaways/2589543/detail.html


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Tuesday, October 28, 2003 11:00 pm

Boxcutter found on airplane at Logan Airport

Associated Press

BOSTON, Mass. — State and federal law enforcement officials are investigating the discovery of a boxcutter found on board a US Airways commuter plane that arrived at Logan Airport in Boston today from Rockland, Maine.

Transportation Security Administration spokeswoman Ann Davis said the boxcutter was found by a flight crew doing a routine sweep of the twin-engine turbo prop plane.

Security at the airport was never breached, Massport spokesman Phil Orlandella said.

The flight arrived in Boston from Knox County Airport in Rockland. The plane was thoroughly inspected after the discovery and the FBI notified, Davis said.

http://news.mainetoday.com/apwire/D7UFJ9Q80-300.shtml

[Huck]

Oh yes, and we are to understand that they were left there by "workers." Like mechanics or cleaning crew, I guess. Lord knows how many boxes those people open in a day. Never met a mech who didn't have at least two boxcutters.

I have a good friend that found a boxcutter in a major airline cockpit last month. It was whisked away and he was told it was left there by maintenance. His follow-up emails to management were not answered.

Suck in your guts, people. I suspect the worst is coming, again....

[A and C]

For better or for worse the hi-jack as we know it will no longer work because all the other passengers on the aircraft know that they are dead people unless they take the hi-jackers on and win.

It did not take the brave people on the 9/11 aircraft that was prevented from hitting the terrorists target to catch on to the realitys of the situation and act.

The flight crews will no longer open the flight deck door what ever is going on in the cabin.

For these reasons I think that any attempt at hi-jack will result in the passengers "overpowering "the terrorists and the flight crew keeping control of the aircraft.

The political terrorist is quite new to the American people and the events of 9/11 have shocked the American people to the core but in europe this terrorist activity has been a fact of life for years and so while keeping alert for terrorist actions we do not see the odd knife (or boxcutter as you call them ) as a threat in its self , after all every mechanics tool box has one and in an aviation industry as big as the one in the USA one or two boxcutters are bound to go missing by accident from time to time.

If you Americans dont cool down this hysterical reaction to small every day events then the American way of life will be destroyed and the terrorists will have won.

[Woff1965]

Boxcutters found in a cockpit is a security risk because?

Unless the flight crew intend to stab each other and/or hijack themselves it is not much of a risk is it!.

Now if they found these hidden in the cabin taped under a seat or in a overhead then I would panic.

[Frankfurt_Cowboy]

Who's to say that Mr BinLiner hasn't got airline pilots ready to martyr themselves? Perhaps the 11th September chaps were the ones the airlines rejected, there might be a whole load of suicide pilots just biding their time, flying around the world waiting for the call. The cockpit craft knives could be for them.

[zerozero]

No, no, no.

You guys have missed the point (except Huck).

The box cutters are merely symbolic of the failings of airport security.

Whoever planted these knives may have just as well planted shoes with fuses hanging out of them.

Certainly a shoe with only a fuse is harmless but if you tried to pass security with one you'd find yourself tackled and hog-tied.

Someone is trying to make a point and I think it's a pretty good one.

The truth is anything can be a weapon. And airport security is a sham.

Whoever is planting boxcutters is saying essentially the same thing.

[phnuff]

I think zerozero is right - finding boxcutters is more a statement on airport secuity rather than the prelude to an another 9/11. As he rightly says, they could have easily been shoes with fuses. Having recently visited the US, I also noticed that the patience and understanding by passengers at security points that followed 9/11 is evaporating and being replaced by the kind of annoyance that preceded 9/11.

[Airbubba]

Officials Downplaying Latest Box-Cutter Discovery
TSA Official Says Blades Were Probably Left By Workers

POSTED: 12:45 p.m. EST October 29, 2003
UPDATED: 5:32 p.m. EST October 29, 2003

BOSTON -- Officials are insisting that security was never breached at Logan International Airport Tuesday, but an investigation is under way after a utility knife was found aboard a commuter jet from Maine.

NewsCenter 5's Janet Wu reported that federal officials are downplaying the discovery of the knives and razorblade that were found on two U.S. Airways planes in Boston and Philadelphia Tuesday.

A utility knife was found on the Philadelphia plane after it arrived from Houston, and the knife and razor found on a commuter plane that flew in from Portland, Maine.

The flight crew found the objects after the plane's passengers had disembarked.

"The blade was found under seat 1, by itself. It probably could have been dropped from a worker using this as part of a scraping tool, is my guess. And [the] utility knife was found under a seat in row 4 and similarly, this is the typical implement that most maintenance workers use on the airplanes. This is used, as I mentioned, to cut newspaper, open up bales of packaging and also to install carpeting. My guess is they had been on the plane for awhile and just nobody may have seen them," said George Naccara, of the Transportation Security Administration, or TSA.

Naccara said he did not think the blades had been left on the planes in another attempt to test security, as was the case several weeks ago when a student claimed he planted box cutters on an aircraft. Naccara said these were probably left inadvertently, and the government is checking to see if they can locate the workers who may have left them.

"We are looking to check the different locations of the plane to see if a worker left one of these," Naccara said.

But on the same day, a similar knife was found on ANOTHER US Airways flight - this one in Philadelphia on a plane that had just arrived from Houston. Passengers there were evacuated. Federal officials say they doubt there is any connection between the two discoveries.

"I think they should look into it further," traveler Bernadine Houston said.

Following the discovery, Massachusetts State Police and the TSA randomly searched 35 planes at Logan and found nothing.


http://www.thebostonchannel.com/news/2591901/detail.html

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"The doctors X-rayed my head and found nothing."

--Dizzy Dean, baseball player, explaining how he felt after being hit on the head by a ball in the 1934 World Series

[sanket_patel]

Man, and I though things were getting better....

[zerozero]

sanket_patel: Respectfully, sir, you've obviously been listening *far* too much to Bush and Rumsfeld.

[Rollingthunder]

Misdirection. The thing is, if the :mad: try to turn aircraft into missles again they won't use old methods. The may be :mad: insane but they aren't stupid.