Passengers escorted from plane at Melbourne Airport after 'security lapse'

[Asturias56]

https://www.9news.com.au/national/passengers-forced-from-flight-after-sydney-airport-security-breach/5b7f7252-a2a2-4bdb-b48b-8e03a1537935

More than 200 passengers were escorted off a Qantas plane at Melbourne Airport overnight following a security screening issue.
The incident was triggered after authorities deemed Qantas flight 487 from Sydney to Melbourne an 'unscreened aircraft' because one passenger was not screened properly.
The issue was discovered when the plane was in mid air and when it landed at Melbourne Airport, the aircraft's captain informed passengers.

[Mugsgame]

Re-screening after the fact. Awesome job, disaster averted....

[HalfGreen]

A Qantas spokesperson said today that a passenger on the flight had "inadvertently passed through the unscreened to screened part of the airport in Sydney".

How on earth did that happen? Just strolled past security?

[Checklist Charlie]

Wow, it must have been a major issue/threat for the reaction as described.
Machine gun toting black dressed "officers" must have been justified by the threat.
Yet the aircraft arrived as advertised and without any problem.
Just shows how much we really need the security pantomime the public are subjected to.

CC

[PiperCameron]

Re-screening after the fact. Awesome job, disaster averted....

They're just making sure that the disaster that could have happened but didn't, couldn't have happened in the first place.. and if they found something, perhaps their plan was to prevent the offending pax from boarding the flight they just left?!?

Yep, yet another another awesome use of passenger's time and taxpayers resources. These guys could do a great comedy routine, except nobody would believe it! :D

[mates rates]

The guy has arrived and left the aircraft!! what is the threat to departing passengers? unbelievable!!What is wrong with this country?

[compressor stall]

Only logic is that he could possibly pass on something to another pax going somewhere (or secrete it in the terminal). Hence they are escorted to landslide.

[SHVC]

Shouldn’t the headline read” airport security lets unscreened passenger through” guess that would not make a headline, the truth I mean.

[deja vu]

Makes as much sense as confiscating the pilots nail clippers when he has a 3kg axe in the cockpit.

[BuzzBox]

Only logic is that he could possibly pass on something to another pax going somewhere (or secrete it in the terminal). Hence they are escorted to landslide.

Sure, but if the passengers were escorted landside, why did they then re-screen everyone? Surely only those passengers transiting to other flights would need to be re-screened and the rest could have been let go.

[43Inches]

So the passenger arrived from Bathurst, unscreened and somehow walked around Sydney airport in the screened area before boarding the Melbourne flight, doesn't that mean the whole of Sydney T1 is now un-screened? And since when is it the passengers prerogative to exit and re-enter screened areas, how would they know the requirement, the terminal should be designed that unscreened passengers can not enter a screened area anyway. I see more issues than the fact Melbourne wanted them re-screened... More so how are passengers inbound from unscreened ports handled at that terminal.

The regular traveller, who asked to remain anonymous, said he had flown into Sydney Airport on a regional flight from Orange and explained the missed screening occurred in the transfer.
Orange Airport did not have security screening and normally passengers would be directed out of the airport once landing in Sydney, and made to come back through to be checked before boarding their next flight, he said. 
In this instance, he said passengers who got off the Orange flight were allowed to proceed through the airport to their next flight without going through security.

I think this might be just adding to QFs woes if they are making mistakes where a whole plane of unscreened pax start walking around a terminal.

[TWT]

Beryllium , I doubt that the majority of people (not morons) believe much of what any government tells them.

[Paragraph377]

The idiots from AMS (formerly OTS) will now be turning their attention to the airport and doing even more sneaky ‘systems tests’, dressed as Surfies, or in suit and tie, or perhaps in orange FIFO outfits. They get off on this stuff. Poor airport, they will have to fill in reports, respond to a non-conformance notice and put up with pesky AMS inspectors who get off on wielding authority. And yeah, big deal, one pax breached security accidentally.. There are so many other ways to act nefariously against an aircraft anyway. The whole screening process is completely overrated crap.

[Ascend Charlie]

Since the 9/11 incident, has screening detected any person trying to bring aboard items that could be used in a hijack? I recall the person with the flammable stuff in his shoe and the resultant minimal liquids allowed aboard.

I am not talking about nail clippers or the plastic knife from the chinese takeaway in the terminal. Have any REAL attempts been thwarted? Twenty years we have endured worse and worse inconvenience.

[compressor stall]

Absence of events does not mean that there is no threat. Like it or not Sept 11 rewrote the playbook here.

The issue is trying to put it into legislation, then curve balls come up, and everyone flees to the safest option. What would be the reward for the manager when the rules were grey and old mate was just let go in a fit of common sense? No financial reward, nothing. Not even a pat on the back, or a Rolex. There's only pain if in the 1,000,000 change something went awry. Why would you risk your job making that decision? The only path is do what is the safest. Even if it makes no logical sense.

Blind compliance is the way of the world now.

[uxb99]

Wow, it must have been a major issue/threat for the reaction as described.
Machine gun toting black dressed "officers" must have been justified by the threat.
Yet the aircraft arrived as advertised and without any problem.
Just shows how much we really need the security pantomime the public are subjected to.

CC

Until that one time someone blows one out of the sky.

[Traffic_Is_Er_Was]

Sure, but if the passengers were escorted landside, why did they then re-screen everyone? Surely only those passengers transiting to other flights would need to be re-screened and the rest could have been let go.

It doesn't say anywhere that all passengers were rescreened. Everyone was escorted off the plane, through airside to landside. It would then indeed have been only those transferring on that would have required rescreening back to airside. Anyone terminating in MEL would have been let leave.

[Traffic_Is_Er_Was]

Since the 9/11 incident, has screening detected any person trying to bring aboard items that could be used in a hijack? I recall the person with the flammable stuff in his shoe and the resultant minimal liquids allowed aboard.

I am not talking about nail clippers or the plastic knife from the chinese takeaway in the terminal. Have any REAL attempts been thwarted? Twenty years we have endured worse and worse inconvenience.

You would be very surprised to see the stuff people try to take on board aircraft that gets picked up at the screening points. If it was called "Safety" screening instead of "Security" it would be more accurate, however, is the guy with a knife disguised as a belt buckle the type of guy you want on your aircraft with a knife disguised as a belt buckle?

[Icarus2001]

is the guy with a knife disguised as a belt buckle the type of guy you want on your aircraft with a knife disguised as a belt buckle?

The metal knives are already on board so how does screening them out in the terminal help?

[KRUSTY 34]

Only logic is that he could possibly pass on something to another pax going somewhere (or secrete it in the terminal). Hence they are escorted to landslide.

Correct.

Bummer if you needed to take p!ss on the way out!

[Traffic_Is_Er_Was]

So you would prefer a guy takes his 10" Bowie on board, rather than utilize some blunt cutlery from Business?

[Asturias56]

Security (and policing) is a mind numbingly boring job for 99.99% of the time

So when something happens everyone gets excited and piles in - you can see that when 4 police cars turn up to arrest a drunk in your local shopping mall

[43Inches]

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.

[BuzzBox]

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.

Perhaps "very few" have access to the details of what "actually" happened, apart from reports in the mass media. Some initial reports said that all passengers were re-screened, some didn't. More details have come to light since those early reports were published.

[43Inches]

The very first post has the link I'm referring to. No one elsr has posted a link to the event in question.

[43Inches]

https://www.afr.com/policy/foreign-affairs/my-qantas-flight-from-hell-after-security-breach-20220908-p5bggu

Here's another angle from a journo on the flight. Seems like QF is taking the blame quietly behind the scenes.

Interesting it has to take a jab at the Engineers union for making safety claims during EBA negotiations. Guess they make those claims public when the company stonewalls and it goes behind the scenes when they are happy, as the QF spin group says about this incident, 'nothing sinister here'.

[Lead Balloon]

only a passenger alerted authorities that a security breech had occurredThat’s what I heard. A passenger alerted ‘someone’ that none of the passengers had been screened prior to boarding.

It does raise a familiar conundrum. Imagine what would happen if we all pointed out all of the yawning gaps in the security façade. Alas, I doubt it would result in more ‘security’ but I’d bet folding that it would result in even more inconvenience to the law-abiding.