Last week in Seattle, retired Army lieutenant colonel Greg Alderete drove a van onto a runway tarmac at Sea-Tac airport. Alderete was supposed to be on the runway — he was picking up a general flying in from Portland — but what shocked him was that no one stopped to ask his name, check his ID, or search his vehicle. And you can’t make the excuse that he was dressed as a military officer; Alderete was in civilian clothes.
“We were sitting there, the engine idling, nobody around, when all of a sudden I realized: We’re out on the goddamn runway,” Alderete said. No inspection, no attention, and no screening made Alderete feel like there was a definite problem with the airport’s security, “with a van full of weapons we could have shut down the entire aviation system.”
Granted the colonel was picking up the general in the corporate jet area, where businessmen and government officials fly in and out of, but still, it makes you wonder just how tight airport security really is.
[Story via Boing Boing; image courtesy frischmilch]