Shamed couple caught in aircraft toilet at 30,000ft

Andrew Robinson A YOUNG mother assaulted an air stewardess after being caught in an aircraft toilet cubicle with a male passenger she had just met.Amber Staines, 29, was caught half-dressed at 30,000ft when cabin crew demanded she open a toilet door.She had disappeared into the cubicle with 36-year old Paul Cook for 20 minutes after they drank champagne on a holiday jet from Tenerife to Manchester.Cabin crew opened the door to find the red-faced couple inside.Staines slammed the door against a stewardess's hand, then shouted: "I need to get dressed. Just let me get ****ing dressed."

Police were waiting to arrest Staines and businessman Mr Cook as the plane touched down.Staines, of Moynihan Close, Harehills, Leeds, yesterday admitted common assault and disorderly behaviour and was ordered to complete 50 hours' community service.

The unemployed mother-of-one was also fined £50 and ordered to pay £50 to the stewardess.Magistrates in Sale, Greater Manchester, heard the incident occurred on a Boeing 757 late-night flight.The mother-of-one was sitting next to Mr Cook with passenger Jane Mulholland on the other side."Miss Mulholland said the couple were very intimate," said Cheryl Mottram, prosecuting."They were kissing and cuddling and at some point they requested a blanket. Their behaviour under the blanket caused Miss Mulholland some distress.

She was embarrassed by their activities. Drinks were consumed and half a bottle of champagne was bought and consumed" by the pair."At some point Miss Staines got up and went to the bathroom. Mr Cook followed, knocked on the door and went inside. Twenty minutes later there were four people stood outside and the call light was on."Air stewardess Nicola Hanson realised Staines and Mr Cook were in the cubicle.She opened the door, put her hand over the top to stop it closing but it was slammed shut three times, injuring her hand. Her behaviour was described as aggressive, disturbed and drunk.

Staines initially refused to give her details but later told police nothing happened be-tween them in the toilet and said: "My head is in bits."Bill Message, for Staines, suggested her drink may have been spiked in a hotel bar earlier."She is normally a shy person – not a party animal who goes binge drinking on holiday. She goes on holiday to relax in the normal way," he said.Mr Message said that as the flight had been delayed Staines went to a hotel where she had two single brandies and met Mr Cook."

At one point she left her drink on a table and went to the toilet. With the benefit of hindsight she suspects something might have been put in that..."Nothing serious happened in the toilet, just a bit of cuddling but nothing more than that. The champagne tipped her over into what is unacceptable behaviour.

She wants to apologise to cabin staff. She was very sorry."The court heard Staines had been depressed after her 10-year-old niece's death in a road crash three years ago.Police gave Mr Cook an £80 fixed penalty notice

TSA To Consider Ending Ban on Scissors, Razor Blades,Small Knives,Ice Picks,Throwing Stars and Bow and Arrows.

The new head of the Transportation Security Administration, Edmund "Kip" Hawley, recently asked his staff to propose changes to the way the agency screens 2 million passengers daily.

The staff's first set of recommendations, detailed in an Aug. 5 memo and reported Aug. 12 by the Washington Post, includes a proposal to lift the ban on various carry-on items such as scissors, razor blades and knives less than five inches long. The proposal also would allow ice picks, throwing stars and bows and arrows on flights.

Hawley, rather than throwing the suggestion aside, and-or questioning the logic behind it, instead will allow further disussion of the proposal this month, the Post reports.

If it bothers you that the TSA is spending your tax dollars to consider ways to make us less safe, consider the reasons behind it.

The Post reports that the "TSA is struggling with new cuts in the screener workforce imposed by Congress while its new leaders hope to improve the agency's poor reputation among air travelers by introducing more customer-friendly measures."

Salt Lake Airport an anti-theft model

No baggage screeners arrested for swiping

The police botter on federal airport screeners hasn't instilled much confidence lately.

In New Orleans last year, 13 Transportation Security Administration screeners were arrested for swiping items from bags they checked. A few months later in New York four federal screeners were busted for stealing valuables from suitcases, and Detroit police broke up an electronics theft ring involving a quartet of federal screeners.

Then there's Salt Lake City, where such headlines have been pleasantly lacking.

"We have not had any TSA employees arrested for baggage theft at Salt Lake International," local TSA director Earl Morris said. "It's not to say that it couldn't happen someday, but it has not happened at this point."

Nationally, it's a different story.

All told, 113 federal screeners have been arrested since TSA took over screening duties following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

To fight the problem many airports have installed security cameras to watch screeners in action, and TSA began doing background checks on its screeners.

And TSA officials point out that the number of screeners arrested for theft is a small percentage of TSA's overall work force of 80,000 screeners.

"That is well below one-tenth of 1 percent. It's an extraordinarily low number," TSA spokeswoman Carrie Harmon said.

And in Salt Lake City the chance of an item being stolen during the screening process is almost negligible.

"In Salt Lake City, they've had very few complaints of theft," Harmon said.

But the reason why Salt Lake City has low theft numbers is more difficult to pinpoint. One TSA official who could not be directly quoted noted that Salt Lake City workers do bag checks out on the open because there is room to do screening in the airport's wide halls.

In other airports screening occurs behind the scenes, offering more chances for secrecy and theft.

Harmon and Salt Lake City Department of Airports spokeswoman Barbara Gann, however, downplay that open screening theory.

"I wouldn't know that that would hold a lot of validity," Gann said. "It's all theory."

Gann said it's likely that the airport's "healthy" 54-member police force has more to do with the lack of theft.

In Salt Lake City in the past year, from August 2004 to now, there have been only 18 complaints of theft to airport police. Only four of those 18 complaints were from people who claimed to have things stolen during the screening process.

And in those cases it's difficult to know where exactly the item or items went missing. After TSA screening, a bag is handled by airline employees at various airports as it is shuttled from airplane to baggage claim. It's a long chain that's difficult to trace.

Most of the thefts at Salt Lake City (12 of the 18) occurred when someone left a bag unattended and then never found it again.

Because of the low theft rate, Salt Lake airlines haven't adopted rules that people have to show their bag claim tickets to airline personnel when picking up their checked luggage.

"In general our statistics are always lower than national averages," Gann said. "I think it we were higher, if it were more of an issue, you would see things put in by the airlines like ticket checks at baggage claims."

Hi-tech toothbrush shuts down airport but no one bristles

You don't have to be a toll booth attendant to know there are two sides to every coin. A few headlines in the news this week may have left readers with elevated levels of ambivalence, a condition that can only be rectified by a definitive dose of hearts and darts.2 So you're sitting in an airplane parked on the runway for hours while authorities deal with a possible explosive device in a passenger's luggage. The device turns out to be an instrument for cleaning one's teeth, precisely as the passenger - who turns out to be a dentist - says it is. By this time, the flight is cancelled and you're stuck overnight in Kinston.

Are you ticked?

Opinions differ, even in the same brain.

You're glad someone is paying attention to possible explosive devices in passengers' luggage. You're happy that even so small a facility as the Kinston JetPort has a planned response to such emergencies and you're relieved that no harm was done.

Still, you have to be at least a little miffed - and mystified - that a high-tech toothbrush could shut down an airport, cancel one outgoing and one incoming flight and inconvenience scores of people. Worse, no one in authority seemed particularly concerned about the problems this false alarm created for passengers, much less embarrassed by the over-reaction.

Instead, the sheriff's department spokesman focused on the efficiency of the emergency response and put the onus for heading off future incidents on passengers, who must pack more carefully and anticipate what will cause baggage screeners to hit the alarm button. That's a tough one, judging from the standards applied to a dental device. The spokesman's explanation of how an instrument dedicated to the destruction of tooth decay caused such a ruckus - "It didn't look like what it was" - says a lot about the bizarre times in which we live.

Expectations of inconvenience in the post-9/11 world have created more compliant personalities. At the airport, at the gas pump, in the checkout line - where there's no control, there's little reason to complain. Or is there more?

Y The good news about Lenoir County schools' performance in 2005 ABC testing is that more schools did very well and most schools did well enough. The bad news is that poor-performing schools continue to perform poorly.

There's no mystery as to why. Poverty, lack of a stable home life and little parental involvement in education top the list. Low-income students have issues that supersede a reading lesson. The challenge for educators here is to figure out how to level the playing field, to give all students the same chance to learn.

Needless to say, they'll be working on that one for years. And all the while, they will be prodded by requirements of the federal No Child Left Behind program. For all its faults, No Child Left Behind does shine a light on children that might otherwise fall through the cracks. With the state's ABC program, a school with a high percentage of students testing at grade level will score well, but might be masking the failure to educate those students in the minority. That's not possible with the federal program, which looks at the performance of groups of students, segmented by income and ethnicity, at the same school.

Ten of the 12 county schools that met improvements standards under ABC also met No Child Left Behind standards. The flip side of that success story is that five schools in the system fell short by both measurements. Three of the five repeated their poor performance of a year ago.

Opportunities for ending this cycle appear on several levels. A model for what works in Lenoir County already exists. Four schools did extremely well in 2005 testing - three more than the previous year - and they did it by energizing the faculty and mobilizing the parents. Moreover, the system, its students and parents are primed for change, a consequence of new leadership, new policies and impatience with the administrative strife that overshadowed any progress in education in the system for years.

Though not directly related, the discussion sure to come soon about new school construction - how to meet $200 million in physical needs - will raise the same question that testing does: How good is good enough?

CNN Probe Finds Weak Link in Air Security

Nearly four years after 9/11, Americans flying on passenger planes remain vulnerable to another terrorist attack in the air because of lax screening of the millions of tons of cargo loaded into the belly of aircraft, a three-month CNN investigation shows.

While screening of passengers and their luggage has been shored up dramatically since hijackers commandeered four planes and crashed them into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field, little has changed regarding the security of cargo, according to an FAA inspector and the vice chairman of the 9/11 Commission.

On most of the flights that the FAA inspector observes, almost none of the cargo is inspected.

"In respect to cargo, we're probably as vulnerable or more vulnerable," said the inspector, who insisted on not being identified for fear of employer retaliation. "Cargo still has a lot of loopholes where something could get on an airplane."

Former Indiana Rep. Lee Hamilton, the vice chairman of the 9/11 Commission, said the airline industry and the federal government have failed to seriously address the security of air cargo, a multibillion-dollar industry.

"I think this is a point of real vulnerability for America, for the traveling public," Hamilton said. "We are not doing the kind of safety measures that we should be doing to protect the American public."

CNN crisscrossed the country, traveling from one airport to another, and saw firsthand how easy it would be for a terrorist to slip an explosive or lethal chemicals onto an airplane because of holes in the cargo security network.

PDX Airport Concourse Closed After SCREENING FAILURE

One of the main, busy concourses at Portland International Airport was closed briefly Saturday morning when two airline passengers, a mother and her daughter, got through a checkpoint before they were fully screened by security workers.

Port of Portland spokesman Steve Johnson called the security breach inadvertant, saying the mother and daughter slipped away and were briefly out of sight of the airport screeners.

Transportation Security Administration workers agreed that it was just a mistake by the pair and not an attempt to avoid the full screening.

Flight Delayed after KNIFE goes through CHECKPOINT...


Workers installed locks on all doors at the Atlanta airport's main security checkpoint Tuesday, three days after another early morning security breach.

For the second time in two weeks, passengers walked through unlocked doors that enabled them to bypass screening on their way to gates at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.

In the latest incident, two of the four men who avoided screening never were found, although officials do not believe they had any malicious intent. The breach happened at 5:17 a.m. Saturday, when a security screener stopped two men walking through a closed lane on the far right of the checkpoint, said Christopher White, a spokesman for the Transportation Security Administration, which oversees airport security.

The glassed-in lane normally is reserved for people who require extra screening — often because of potentially suspicious behavior such as booking a flight at the last minute or paying with cash. But at that hour, the lane was closed and unstaffed, although the door did not have a lock.

The men said they were directed to that lane by an airport contract employee checking tickets in front of the checkpoint. The men then were screened and allowed to continue on to their flights.

An initial review of security videotape led TSA managers to believe only those men had bypassed screening. A later review by top management determined that two more men also had bypassed screening a short time earlier.

By that time, it was 2 1/2 hours after the security breach and the TSA decided not to shut down the entire airport and rescreen all passengers.

BREACH IN ATLANTA

Workers installed locks on all doors at the Atlanta airport's main security checkpoint Tuesday, three days after another early morning security breach.

For the second time in two weeks, passengers walked through unlocked doors that enabled them to bypass screening on their way to gates at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.

In the latest incident, two of the four men who avoided screening never were found, although officials do not believe they had any malicious intent. The breach happened at 5:17 a.m. Saturday, when a security screener stopped two men walking through a closed lane on the far right of the checkpoint, said Christopher White, a spokesman for the Transportation Security Administration, which oversees airport security.

The glassed-in lane normally is reserved for people who require extra screening — often because of potentially suspicious behavior such as booking a flight at the last minute or paying with cash. But at that hour, the lane was closed and unstaffed, although the door did not have a lock.

The men said they were directed to that lane by an airport contract employee checking tickets in front of the checkpoint. The men then were screened and allowed to continue on to their flights.

An initial review of security videotape led TSA managers to believe only those men had bypassed screening. A later review by top management determined that two more men also had bypassed screening a short time earlier.

By that time, it was 2 1/2 hours after the security breach and the TSA decided not to shut down the entire airport and rescreen all passengers.

United worker aided scheme, DEA says

Federal agents made public charges Tuesday against six people accused of operating a drug trafficking organization that imported cocaine from Mexico and distributed it across the Midwest.

The investigation, conducted by the Drug Enforcement Administration, also revealed that a woman employed by United Airlines working at O'Hare International Airport helped the alleged drug traffickers.

The woman is not charged or named in the complaint. Assistant U.S. Atty. Julie Pekron declined to comment on whether the woman is under investigation or will be charged.

...

When he and two unidentified men arrived later that day for their flight, the woman harassed Transportation Security Administration screeners who singled out the unidentified men for additional checks.

The woman "told the TSA employees that they were being `racist' in selecting [the unidentified men] for a secondary inspection," Williams wrote.

Questions and Answers on Airline Safety

By LESLIE MILLER

WASHINGTON (AP) - There always will be dangers that accompany flying, but passengers can take precautions that will improve their chances of surviving - as did everyone aboard the Air France flight that ran off the runway in Toronto.

More people than ever are flying and it's safer than ever to take to the sky. The last major U.S. crash was more than 3 1/2 years ago.

Some questions and answers about airline safety:

A: Good. A National Transportation Safety Board study found that while 2,280 people died in 568 commercial plane accidents from 1988 through 2000, nearly 23 times as many survived - 51,207.

Q: What can I do to improve my chances of survival?

A. Have an evacuation plan. When you take your seat, check to see where the emergency exits are and count the number of rows to them in case the lighting fails. Read the safety card instructions. If you are in an exit row, make sure you understand the tasks you may have to perform if the aircraft is evacuated. Stay alert during takeoff and landing because that is when an accident is most likely. Keep laptops and other items stowed until the plane reaches cruising altitude because they can become dangerous projectiles in an accident. Keep your shoes on.

Q. How much time will I have to evacuate?

A. The Federal Aviation Administration requires aircraft manufacturers to demonstrate that planes can be emptied within 90 seconds before they are allowed to fly. Any longer and the chances of dying from fire or smoke inhalation increase significantly.

In your plane is evacuated, stay calm. Look behind you for exit doors; many passengers crowd toward the front exits because that is the way they got on. Leave your baggage behind, but not in the aisles.

Q: How can I avoid injuries?

A. Wear clothing made from natural fibers. Synthetic clothing has melted on the skin of people involved in accidents. To avoid getting burned when sliding down escape chutes, wear long pants and do not wear nylon hose. Avoid heels, which can puncture the evacuation slides.

Q: What do I do if the slides do not work or if some of the exits are blocked?

A. This happens fairly often - up to one-third of the time, according to the NTSB. If a chute fails, stay calm and listen to the flight attendants. They have been trained how to redirect passengers if exits are blocked or unusable because slides are not working.

Q: What has been done to make airliner cabins safer?

A: The FAA has done a lot to prevent in-flight fires, which are especially dangerous because of the amount of fuel that planes carry. Seat cushions must be made of fire-retardant material, lavatories must have smoke detectors and fire extinguishers, and the cabin ceilings and walls must be made of material that does not burn quickly. The agency also recently ordered the insulation replaced or upgraded in some kinds of aircraft. Aircraft manufacturers are now required to install stronger seats that will not collapse or rip out of the floor in an accident. Rules were made stricter for maintaining and inspecting slides.

Man sentenced for molesting sleeping woman on Delta Air Flight

BOSTON (Reuters) - A business executive was sentenced on Thursday to seven years in prison for sexually assaulting a sleeping woman seated next to him on a Delta Air Lines flight from Dallas to Boston.

A statement from the U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts said that on April 5, Deepak Jahagirdar, 55, laid a blanket over the 22-year-old woman who was returning from a vacation, unfastened her seat belt, unbuttoned her pants and assaulted her by touching her genitals.

"The woman immediately pulled Jahagirdar's hand from her pants and fled to the rear of the aircraft where she reported the assault to the flight crew," it said.

The crew alerted four U.S. Secret Service Agents who were on board the flight, returning from an assignment in Texas.

The plane was met by state police in Boston but Jahagirdar briefly tried to escape by trying to flee in the walkway between the plane and the airport.

Skin cells taken from Jahagirdar, an Arizona man whom authorities said did not know the woman, showed a "significant quantity of the victim's DNA was present on his hands" after the incident, the statement said.

After his release, Jahagirdar must pay a $25,000 fine and be supervised by authorities for two years.

Ontonagon airport reports theft

ONTONAGON -- Homeland Security items were stolen from the Ontonagon County Airport office Wednesday or Thursday.

The Ontonagon County Sheriff's Department is investigating the break-in, which occurred between 8 p.m. on Wednesday and 7 a.m. Thursday, according to sheriff John Gravier.

Gravier said sheriff's deputies received a 7:13 a.m. Thursday call from Bill Johnson, county emergency services coordinator, reporting the burglary at the airport office.

"Upon investigation, it was learned that Homeland Security items were stolen," the sheriff said. Investigating officers are not revealing details of what was stolen, but said the items are valued in excess of $2,500.

Anyone with information concerning the break-in should call either the sheriff's department at 884-4901 or the local police department.

Gravier said an evidence technician from the Michigan State Police post in Wakefield has been assisting his department in the investigation.

Florida Woman Accused Of Trying To Open Jet Door In Flight

A Florida woman accused of trying to open a United Airlines jet exit door as the flight descended into Seattle was arrested when the plane landed safely,Port of Seattle police said. Flight 1195, en route from Denver, was reportedly at an altitude of about 4,000 feet Wednesday when the 52-year-old woman from Dania Beach,sitting at the rear of the Boeing 737,left her seat and tried to open an exit door.Authorities did not release the woman's name.

She failed but "she did manage to turn the handle far enough that a warning light went on in the cockpit," Seattle-Tacoma International Airport spokesman Bob Parker told KING-TV."Ultimately, at the urging of the flight attendant, she went and sat back down," he said. Those on board said no one tried to physically restrain the woman. Parker said those who saw her at the door made a "conscious choice" to stay securely belted in their seats just in case she did manage to open the door.The woman was arrested for investigation of malicious mischief when the plane landed at 1:30 p.m.

Port police were investigating whether alcohol and prescription medication were involved.A United spokesman did not immediately return a call for comment

TSA UNFRIENDLY TO PEOPLE WEARING DEPENDS






The fine folks at Kimberly- Clark, makers of DEPENDS adult diapers have a nice little message board with a section on Airport Security and the fine TSA organization, check it out HERE.