Confiscations at airports rise
More banned items turning up despite alerts
Despite intensifying concern about terrorism since the 9/11 attacks, the rate of finding such items is actually increasing. It rose from about 11 potential weapons surrendered per 1,000 originating passengers in 2003 to more than 12 last year.
"We can't really speculate why people keep bringing prohibited items," Transportation Security Administration spokeswoman Carrie Harmon said. "A lot of people honestly forget they have something wrong, and others are simply not preparing themselves carefully to go through airport security."
The findings come from TSA data for all U.S. airports obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by the Deseret Morning News. Analysis yielded many other interesting findings, including:
• Smaller airports actually have far higher rates of weapons surrendered per originating passenger than do larger airports. (Interestingly, the 9/11 terrorists chose to pass through security at smaller airports, thinking screeners there would be less vigilant than at large airports.)
• Nearly 16 million potential weapons were surrendered at U.S. airports during three years from February 2002 (as TSA started taking over screening) through March 2005.
• Items collected included at least 4.8 million knives, 1,000 firearms, 7.8 million "sharp objects," 1.6 million prohibited tools (from chain saws to screwdrivers), nearly 69,000 weapon replicas, and 41,000 containers of ammunition or gunpowder. Of special interest after 9/11, it also included nearly 55,000 box cutters. (See charts below.)
• Screeners found one potential weapon for about every 111 people who passed through security. That means an average of one to four people on almost every flight — depending on the size of the plane — attempted to carry on a prohibited item.
• Two Utah airports, at Moab and Vernal, have among the highest rates of all airports for potential weapons surrendered per 1,000 originating passengers. Moab ranked sixth out of 444 airports with data available (finding 258 potential weapons per 1,000 passengers), and Vernal ranked 10th (finding 113 per 1,000 passengers). The average for all airports was just nine potential weapons per 1,000 passengers.
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